As I get older, and lose more of the people I love, I hang much less hope on my rational comprehension of whatever awaits us on the far side of death. Scripture itself isn’t very clear about the details and I haven’t yet been visited by an angel with inside information. But my trust in the truth and the hope of the scriptures somehow has only deepened over the years. And I find myself, if not more certain about the details, so much more confident in the divine Love that awaits us. I do believe that somehow all the vulnerable infants, and all the anxious parents, the hopeful, foreign wise ones and even the violent tyrants, all exist only within the absurdly wide mercy of God. So do you. So do I. So do all of the living. So do all of the dead.
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As I get older, and lose more of the people I love, I hang much less hope on my rational comprehension of whatever awaits us on the far side of death. Scripture itself isn’t very clear about the details and I haven’t yet been visited by an angel with inside information. But my trust in the truth and the hope of the scriptures somehow has only deepened over the years. And I find myself, if not more certain about the details, so much more confident in the divine Love that awaits us. I do believe that somehow all the vulnerable infants, and all the anxious parents, the hopeful, foreign wise ones and even the violent tyrants, all exist only within the absurdly wide mercy of God. So do you. So do I. So do all of the living. So do all of the dead.
“Let it be unto me according to your will,” was not an act of blind obedience or resignation to a fate. It was an opening of a space in Mary to receive the gift of God. And in doing so, Mary wasn’t setting herself apart from us. She was showing us the way.
What do you need emptying of, dear virgin friends, so that God can prime you with glorious gifts, that your life might be given away with no expectation of return?
But if we wake up resolved to choose a relationship with God, we can be fairly certain that we’ll be asked to do things that might make the neighbors talk, that might push us toward people we’d otherwise avoid, that we’ll be asked to stand up for truths that aren’t popular or even sensible. I hate to say it, but sometimes it might even look like our lives are on fire.
" Mutual grace seems to be part of Paul's plan to unite the early Christian Church, and every generation of believers has had to grapple with this question of what is foundational to our faith. This ongoing work requires both the intervention of the Holy Spirit and I think a measure of sacred imagination to envision what has not yet come to be. And in this season of Advent, we are invited to slow down to exhale in the midst of the busyness of the season as we prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming of God incarnate."
We just keep showing up together in the present with the lives we actually have. And maybe find that the risen Christ does keep showing up among us, not in the ways we planned for. But with a new word, a new wisdom for a new day that we were never meant to anticipate.
Because this life is where we are now, and wouldn’t it be extraordinary if we could flip the script around, so that instead of projecting qualities of this broken world onto the next, we could instead take the hints we get about the wholeness that awaits us and get about the business of living that way now and here?
Maybe All Saints’ Day is the day we’re reminded that the Church isn’t the place where we get free of enemies Jesus asks us to love. It’s where he traps us with some of the most obnoxious ones and says, “Here we are, folks. Shall we get on with it?”
If you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough, if you’ve been carrying fear, shame, exhaustion, or rage, hear this good news. The Lord stands beside you.
And yet a door to another world still stands open to every moment. A door to a
better way. Which is to see your life, not as an achievement of your savvy and your
will, but as a gift. A gift from a loving God who doesn’t trick us into faithfulness or
force us into submission, because that’s not love. A gift from the God who woos us
with blessings that are given in spite of our selfish shrewdness, not as rewards.
Blessings given simply because it is the nature of love to bless. A door stands open.
But you won’t be tricked or shoved through it. Because it’s open to life in the realm
of gift and love. It will still cost you everything you’ve tricked this world out of thus
far. But could you send all of that to the far side of the river, and limp through the
door into another way of being alive?
And so this little moment of counsel from twenty-five-some-odd centuries ago helps me learn how to do that. What to do when I find myself waking up in a strange place that I don’t recognize and can only mutter: I don’t understand this world, I don’t want this, I don’t know what to do with all this. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
"What would it take for you to give up, at least a little, the credit-taking game and step a little more fully into a deeper faith in your belovedness by God?"
Especially when we can’t find it, when we insist that it is still true, that there is a balm in Gilead, we are making a bold and audacious proclamation: Proclaiming that all the while there is still beauty and kindness, that repair is just as real as destruction.
One thing a little time away has made clear to this sinner is that I need you if the old patterns are to be broken in me. I need a community of people trying to listen to Jesus and to live by the light of his love.
We pray in order to be, to be in the presence of God, being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and that the miracle we get from prayer is God’s presence and God’s hearing us, not a particular outcome. And though that understanding lives somewhere in my heart and in my soul and a big place in my mind, the truth is that prayer remains a mystery for me.
The kingdom of God is real.
What if we choose this story? What if we tell this story to ourselves and to everyone we meet on the way, and to every house we enter, and at every meal we eat? What could it look like to live inside that story, to imagine a world where the harvest is plentiful, where we all get to be there, where the wolves and the lambs lie down together?
As I get older, and lose more of the people I love, I hang much less hope on my rational comprehension of whatever awaits us on the far side of death. Scripture itself isn’t very clear about the details and I haven’t yet been visited by an angel with inside information. But my trust in the truth and the hope of the scriptures somehow has only deepened over the years. And I find myself, if not more certain about the details, so much more confident in the divine Love that awaits us. I do believe that somehow all the vulnerable infants, and all the anxious parents, the hopeful, foreign wise ones and even the violent tyrants, all exist only within the absurdly wide mercy of God. So do you. So do I. So do all of the living. So do all of the dead.
