Taking Turns (or Not)

 

Devotion for Being Apart -
August 19

This summer, I will share new devotions fromtime to time,

and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted here on this blog.

I shared this prayer from Nadia Bolz-Weber Tuesday in the announcements: 

Dear God,

We are going to just be taking turns for a while, if that’s ok.

Yesterday was mine. My turn to be depressed-as-hell about the closing of beloved, been-around-for-decades local businesses. My turn to be afraid because the wildfires are so bad that my eyes sting and the interstate is closed. My turn to be angry.  My turn to indulge in post-apocalyptic future-casting. (OK maybe I shouldn't have watched Mad Max this week.)

Please help me not feel bad when it’s my turn, Lord. And with your grace, may my turn to completely freak out not last one minute longer than necessary. But also may it last as long as needed in order to allow it to pass when it’s time to move on and just go make the salad for dinner.

And Lord, may I be a non-anxious presence to the next person whose turn it is. May I not fear their fear so much that I fail to listen well. When I have even the tiniest extra bit of hope may I offer it without fear of being judged for “not paying attention”. 

And may I remember that my terror is not a sign of your absence and my hope is not a sign of your presence. 

Because you never take turns. 

This spoke to me Monday because Monday felt like my turn.
Tuesday, it turned out I am not so good at taking turns. 

My family spent five days in a cabin way up the Gunflint Trail last week.  Surrounded by the sounds and sights of nature, with my phone and email off, it was a much-needed rest for which I am profoundly grateful.  We returned Saturday to a delightful outdoor baptism Saturday evening, and then a lovely zoom worship service on Sunday.  
And then the funk descended.  

I flailed on Monday.  Rattled around aimlessly, trying to out-walk, out-eat, out-read the hovering depression that threatened to descend from the moment I awoke to another ordinary day in COVID world.  By bedtime I was determined to be gentle with myself and the adjustment back to reality that was going to look, apparently, messier than I'd hoped.

Today I am back to making lists and taking things slowly, welcoming interruptions and trying to remember to take lots of slow, deep breaths.  It helps to notice things like the resting dog's inexplicably wagging tail, the squirrel in the tree off our deck that's been boisterously shouting to the neighborhood for five straight hours, the tiny, personal smile on the face of my kid who just walked by me, lost in thought. 

But yesterday, oof. Yesterday it was not my turn.  It was other people's in my house turn to be a mess, and I met them with impatience and irritation. I pointed out their illogic. I lost my temper at their temper tantrums.  I competed for pathetic points.  I rolled my eyes, and sighed, and withheld my empathy and attention. 

The problem is, sometimes we don't actually take turns.
Sometimes we are all feeling rotten at the same time.  
Then what?

Then God's grace holds us too.  
Then, I am invited to recognize that it's not all dependent on our feelings, and how well or poorly we are handling things, or whether we are there for each other in the ways we hope to be or utterly not.  Because, as I continue to cling to throughout this time, This is part of the story. This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God.

The roller coaster ride of emotions will be what it will be.  And even when we handle things regretfully with each other, and do a bad job of taking turns, that is not the final word. We have the next moment, and the moment after that, the next day, and the day after that. And even our breakdowns and break-ups and broken relating can be part of the larger story of being made closer, more with each other, more for each other.  Because we already and always belong to each other and to God, and that's not up to us to decide.  God has already done this.

Last night, when session met under the shade of the maple tree on the church patio, we read a paraphrase (by Nan C. Merrill) of the Psalm Theresa preached for us on Sunday, Psalm 13.

It says,
How long, my Beloved?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear this pain in my soul,
and lie with sorrow all the day?
How long will fear rule my life?

Notice my heart and answer me,
O my Beloved;
enlighten me, lest I walk as one dead to life;
Lest my ego fears say, "We have won the day;"
Lest they rejoice in their strength.

As I trust in your steadfast Love;
my heart will rejoice,
for in You is freedom.
I shall sing to the Beloved,
who has answered my prayers a thousand fold!
Come, O Beloved, make your home in my heart.

I felt myself praying this as I awoke today: 
How long will fear rule my life?
Notice my heart and answer me, God,
enlighten me lest I walk as one dead to life.
Come, Lord, make your home in my heart.

I will not walk as one dead to life.
And today I feel fortified.
It can be someone else's turn to melt down, I'm ready today.  I will pray to be for them the non-anxious presence and the speaker of hope.

And if I am not as steady as I thought I was, and their meltdown leads to my own, so what?  God can use that too.  We are all in this together. You. Me. God. The rest of the world. This story keeps going.

 
So come, Lord, make your home in our hearts.
We will trust in your steadfast love. For in you is freedom.
Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let's use the psalm to pray.
Read it through several times.
Let the phrases that reach for your heart nestle there.
Repeat them to yourself a few times and sit in silence. Let God speak to you through the words.
End by reading through the psalm one final time.

(Psalm 13, paraphrase by Nan C. Merrill in Psalms for Praying.)

How long, my Beloved?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear this pain in my soul,
and lie with sorrow all the day?
How long will fear rule my life?

Notice my heart and answer me,
O my Beloved;
enlighten me, lest I walk as one dead to life;
Lest my ego fears say, "We have won the day;"
Lest they rejoice in their strength.

As I trust in your steadfast Love;
my heart will rejoice,
for in You is freedom.
I shall sing to the Beloved,
who has answered my prayers a thousand fold!
Come, O Beloved, make your home in my heart.

Already, always, forever

                    Devotion for Being Apart -

August 9

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

 

Romans 8:38-39

This summer we've worked our way through Romans eager to get to chapter 8 – the pinnacle that the whole first part is building toward, and rightly so because it’s a ridiculous treasure trove of good news, and things kind of go downhill into complicated Paulisms after that. So three weeks ago, when we got to chapter 8, I called Lisa and said, “There’s so much goodness here, I’m taking just the first part and saving the rest for you!” Then, on Sunday, like a true Minnesotan who keeps cutting the last piece of cake in half, Lisa called me and said, “I saved you the end, verses 38-39!” 
One of my favorite things to do is to listen to books while I am driving.  When Lisa called, I was driving home from Kansas and listening to Jim Finley’s Thomas Merton and the Path to the Palace of Nowhere.  Finley is a former monk, a psychologist and contemplative.  And it just so happened that he unpacked some things about the love of God in such simple and profound ways, that his illustrations have stuck with me all week.  So I am going to be sharing a lot from him today.
 
So let’s start by reframing the message to hear how good this news is that Paul is sharing: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor a global pandemic, nor the deep-seated, soul degrading institution of racism, nor terrible tragedies of floods and fires and cities exploding, nor terrible sadness in our own hearts, nor melting ice shelves, nor impending election drama, nor distance learning, nor a quarantined winter, nor financial hardship, nor loneliness, nor worry, nor fear, nor the broadest nightmare my imagination can conjur up, nor the most specific, surgical insult or injury, nor anything else in all of existence can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
Nothing can separate us from God’s love.  This is really good news, and we need to hear it.  Except that, really, most of the time we doubt this. 
 
Doubt 1 – Does God really love me?  We tell ourselves there are things we need to change, or do, or be, or let go of, or stop being, or stop doing in order for God to love us. We tell ourselves God is something we need to pursue, and God’s love is something we need to search for in order to find, and if we do find it, we need to figure out what to do right so we don’t lose it.
 
We don’t actually trust that we are already in the love of God, that in fact, nothing can separate us from this love that is already holding us.
 
James Finley says, “Imagine if, sitting in this room, I were told I had 10 minutes to figure out how to get into this room.  So I lept up from my chair and raced down the hallway and frantically searched through the books on the shelves for something to help me figure out how to get in this room.  No matter what I did, I would never figure out how to get in this room, and I actually can’t get in this room. Because I am already in it.”
 
Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is here, already, right now, holding us. Nothing.
 
We are already in this love. We don’t do anything to get here.  We just stop and be here. Just be. Be here. In your life, in your skin, in your experience, however that is, however you are. Here is where God is already loving you. 

God loves you. Nothing ever can stop that from being true.  Seeking God does not mean wandering around searching for an elusive being. It means attuning your attention to the right now, and surrendering to the love that already holds you. 
 
Then, Doubt 2 -   Can I really surrender to this love? Can we entrust ourselves to God? Should we? Can we pray, “thy will be done,” trusting that what that means is only love, more love, deeper love?
 
“We proclaim the good news of God’s love,” Finley says, “but when we get down to the act of surrendering to this love, that is when the doubts rise up.”
 
He says, imagine you’re in a grocery store and you see someone you know and they say, “Did you hear about so-and-so?” 
“No! What happened to her?” 
“Well, God’s will, that’s what.” 
“Oh no!” you reply. “That’s terrible!  “But actually, come to think of it, I did hear her say “’thy will be done.’” 
What do we imagine God’s will is? Who do we think this God is and what do we think this God is up to? Deep inside do we think God is secretly trying to rope us into something terrible?  
 
I imagine that my kids are still little, and one of them is on the the top of a monkey bars, and I am down below, and I say to my precious toddler “Jump!” and hold out my arms to my child. If my little one were to jump, it would be inconceivable to imagine that, at the last minute I step out of the way and let them fall to the ground.  And yet we think this way about God. 
 
In Matthew 7 Jesus says, “Is there anyone among you who, if 
your child asks for bread, will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? (Luke’s version adds an egg and a scorpion).  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
 
These are symbols of life and death. In other words, if we ask for life, will God give us death? God is the maker and sustainer of life! Our life is in God, and this life of being loved by God will never end. Even death cannot stop this life, this love, from continuing! 
 God wants us to have life, and have it abundantly.  And yet, we imagine that surrendering to God’s love might somehow be dreadful for us.  
 
We avoid surrendering, we hold back trusting, as though we have the power to hold back from God’s love. What adorable hubris! As though somehow we could stop God from loving us by stopping ourselves from receiving it.  
This is what actually restricts us.  God’s love has already got us.  We don’t hold God back.  We hold ourselves back from experiencing God’s love from which nothing can separate us. We act like we can’t, or don’t want to, get into the room where we are already sitting, because we aren’t sure we can trust the love inside which we already exist.
We doubt God’s goodness, but trust our own ability to see what is good. This is backwards.  
 
When we say, Your will be done, we are surrendering to the love of God. We are dying to preconceived ideas of God, or of love, or of what a good life is. And we are set free from the false things we cling to, thinking they can somehow get us into the room where we already sit. 
 
Nothing can separate us from the love of God. It’s not that obstacles don’t exist, they do. Everywhere we look we can see obstacles to belonging, obstacles to trust, obstacles to goodness, obstacles to life, obstacles to love.  And yet, in God, these obstacles are not obstacles at all.  Remember what we said two weeks ago and Paul said just a few verses ago? “In all things, God works for the good, together with those who love God.”  So in the broken places, in the places of loss and sorrow, in the division, in the sickness, in the death, God is working, bringing love.  The cross of Christ reveals that God goes right into the greatest of obstacles, the ones that seem to stop life all together, and uses even those to continue bringing freedom and life, through the the relentless, profoundly good, kind, and never-wavering love of God.

We know this love because we’ve felt it - we are most fully ourselves when we are acting in love for others. We are most fully at home in the world when we recognize that which cannot be broken that holds us all, even for a brief moment – in the face of your beloved on zoom, in the joy of crazy loud birds in the sunrise, in the laughter of your grandchild, in the minute a bunch of strangers come scurrying over in their masks to bend down and pick up groceries that fell out of your cart, blueberries bouncing onto the parking lot, when something snaps in you and the grief and anger finally comes pouring out, in the unexpected conversation with an old classmate where courage, vulnerability and well-placed questions open up the possibility for being seen and heard  – in a brief, ordinary moment of living and dying and being, when suddenly the top layer is pulled back, and for that moment we can see the love that is always here, the real underneath the obstacles and illusions, for a moment, we know we are in the room.  

And, then, if someone passing by that very moment were to notice our face, and were to stop us and ask, “What do you most know to be true?” we might respond, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight, let's pray like we did in worship.

Here is the need God... your will be done.
Here is my thanks, God... your will be done.
God your will be done in all things.
I surrender my life to you.
Amen.

On this train together

Devotion for Being Apart -
August 6

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

My kids’ head of school, said the other night, at an online parent meeting:

“If you could join me, adults, if we could join in a small ‘pinkie pact’... when we read articles about students, ‘losing ground’ or ‘falling behind’, that we might take those metaphors and set them aside and talk about how we’re on a train together, and that train has slowed down. What can we do to engage deeper in the scenery that we have access to [now], so that when our train starts moving faster again, we’ll all feel just fine about it?
         Our students right now will become adults. And there’s no reason to think they’ll be less prepared adults than we are currently, or the adults who came before us. In fact, because of this they may be better prepared for adulthood, even if they’ve had a small slow down in the rate of math facts that they’ve accumulated through their academic career."

We are all on this train together. We are no longer racing along at the pace of life that we were accustomed to.  And when we were, we knew, most of us knew, it was an unsustainable speed.  And now it's slowed down. And we are slowed down.  
What is the scenery on this slower ride?  
How can we take in the ride more intentionally?

Over twenty years ago, Andy and I spent three months in Australia. We mostly traveled between cities by plane. But once, we decided to take a train, so we could "get a feel for the size of the country."  We didn't even go that far - Cairns to Brisbane - a 2 hour and 5 minute flight.  

But this train, friends, it went like 30 mph. We puttered along and puttered along, and when we passed through tiny towns we slowed down even more.  School busses passed us.  Kids on bikes passed us.  Dogs ran alongside us barking.  

We were on that train for two days.  Interesting people got on and off.  I found a novel in the dining car and read the whole thing. Andy's shirtless, overall-wearing sleeper-car mate showed him his toe-missing bare foot.  We heard rural Australian accents- different than city talk.  We felt ourselves in a different culture.  Acutely.  Outside the windows, we saw vast stretches of nothing but bushland. Sunset, sunrise, sunset...  

We are on a slow train right now. All of us, together.
One thing that might help is to have different expectations of ourselves, of the world.  Yesterday I went to get labs done, something I often need to have done every six weeks or so.  I have done this three times since covid began, by walking in and being checked in for a lab appointment.  Yesterday I was told, "Since Covid, we don't take walk-ins. You will have to make an appointment." I made one for today, and had to come back to the doctor's office.  Driving through construction to the doctor's office, and back again felt like about all I had in me when it came to outings and errands.
A friend and I were laughing about how we define a "full" day now, as compared to when we were all on a speeding train.  I imagine it's not easy for the doctor's office to slow down so much either.

A wise friend who spent many years living in another country (the one with the great wisdom about being in another culture, which I shared in a devotion) said today:
"I am reminded over and over of the culture adjustment metaphors.  When I arrived in Senegal, the departing worker told me, 'You can do three things a day. When you go into town, do three, no more. Doesn't matter how big or small they are, cap it at three.  Go to the bank, that's one. Then if you buy a pen from a street vendor, that's two.  Pick up some eggs. That's three. Don't do any more.'  I think about that so much these days.  I tell myself, 'Do three things.'"

We are in another culture: Covid Culture. It's nobody's place of origin, nobody's home base or first language. Everything is different. Everything takes so much more effort. Everything is more exhausting. Do three things in a day. No more.

And let's be on this slow train together. Let's figure out how to ride well at this speed.  Notice what's outside the windows. Take in the scenery. See our fellow passengers. Rest while we can.  Let conversations be longer. Find things to read.  Notice the kids and the dogs.  Surrender to the journey.  

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Lord, give me patience to live at this pace.
Give me grace for my fellow travelers.
Give me peace in the small gifts around me.
Give me joy in the surprises that await notice, when I'm going slow enough to take them in.
Give me trust that the journey has a destination.
Give me hope about the quality of life available in this slower ride, that I may not yet have discovered.
Give me patience with myself and for others.
Give me discipline to do three things a day. No more.
Let this time prepare me for what's next, in ways I can't yet see.

Let this time shape us for what we can be.
Amen.
 

Widening our hope scope

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 30

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Last week I stopped by the church building for the third time since mid-March. It's like a time machine.  Frozen in place from the day we walked out of it.  Dee's cookbooks are in the narthex for sharing - where we put them at her Memorial service. The Lenten "hope" bracelets are at the back of the sanctuary for people to take one on their way out of worship. And our bible people are smiling down on the empty pews from the windows.  The building feels stuffy and still, and a little sad.

But one thing stopped me in my tracks.  It was our Lenten theme of hope, still speaking from the hallway wall:







Our questions, with the Psalm 23 collage we did in All-ages Sunday school.

So here it is.
When we hung these questions on the wall, we were living in the "what if?"  We had no idea what was coming, and would not have believed someone if they'd tried to tell us.
I mean, imagine, in retrospect, what "what ifs" we could have said!
What if there's a global pandemic?
What if suddenly kids can't go to school for the rest of the school year?
What if all public places shut down and everyone stays home for weeks on end?
What if hundreds of thousands of people get sick and thousands in our country and around the world die?
What if our economy teeters on the brink of collapse, and people lose their jobs or have to work from home, and those who work at grocery stores and on delivery trucks become "frontline workers?"
What if a black man is brutally murdered in our city by a police officer and the whole country ignites in protests and our nations wakes up in a new way to the problem of racism? 
AND SO ON.

All those what ifs came to pass! False security has crumbled, brokenness is on full display, our future feels uncertain, and life is in a strange suspension and upheaval unlike anything anyone now living has ever experienced before, (As my 90 year old grandma asserted to me last week).

Now we are living in the "Even if"s of our previous "What if"s!
And God is still God.
Love is still love.
Life and hope are coming up where we don't expect them.

Looking forward as we wait for word on schools, and as we watch the virus numbers and death rate climb, as we watch our city try to figure out a way forward.... it would so easy to fall back into "What if."  

But I suggest we look around ourselves at the things that would have been unthinkable, terribly dreaded "what ifs" that have happened, and we notice that here we are, in them, right now, and then we, paradoxically, let that feed our hope.  

We might think of this as practicing "Even though" reflections.
Even though we can't meet in person as a congregation for months on end, still we are church, still worshiping together, still holding each other in prayer.
Even though we can't physically be with those we love, still we are connected, still finding ways to laugh and cry and talk and listen.
Even though... Even though... Even though...

This is what Israel did all the time. They looked back at what God had done, they looked around for what God was doing, and they let them point them ahead to trust what God would do.  At least, this is what they sometimes did, and what the prophets and poets kept inviting them to do.  And through it, they learned that when we are stuck in "What if," then recognizing the "Even though " can lead us back to "Even if."

Even though my job has changed significantly, I'm working, and so many people right now are in this same boat. So...
When I feel myself asking, What if I lose my job? I can trust that
Even if that happens, I will be cared for by God and a way forward will become clear.

Even though the kids struggled in the Spring, we made it through, and everyone learned from that experience. So...
When I feel myself asking, What if the kids don't go back to school in-person?  I can trust that
Even if that happens, we will be cared for by God and a way forward will become clear.

And so on.
And we begin to widen our hope scope, and build our hope muscle.

By the way, I love how hope is a time traveler. The words we hung on the wall back in February have come here to speak to us now.  

Fear asks, "What if?" and Hope answers, "Even if!"  

Thanks be to God.

And now the words drawn and illustrated on the mural taped below our lenten questions by "then" us for "now" us, Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; 

   he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
   for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me. 
You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let your prayer be a kind of litany to God, a call and response in which God answers you.

1-  Begin with the Even though... this is the gratitude time, that purposely acknowledges the presence and activity of God.

Think back to all that you've lost, all that has changed in this time, name it and let the Holy Spirit fill in the rest of the sentence.  This formula makes space to recognize the steadfast love of God.

Even though...   still...
This formula makes space to recognize the resurrection life of God in places that feel fraught.  Watch for signs of hope you can see in the midst of circumstances that have taken place or are taking place right now.

When... God...

2-  When you feel ready to move on, let yourself tap into the places of anxiety and worry in you.  You say the What if... and let God bring you to the Even if...

What if...

Even if...

How to Pray in a Pandemic

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 26

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Illustration of the prayers, done today during worship by Susan Hensel

Romans 8:26-28

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Amusement parks have reopened in Japan, and along with them, some new rules.  (I mentioned this in my devotion on 7-17).  This rule for roller coasters is posted where you can see as you are boarding. “Please scream inside your heart.”  I first discovered it when someone shared in a tweet that said, “After six months, 2020 finally has its motto.”

Paul says that in our weakness, when we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. In other words, when we are screaming inside our heart, we have a translator.
Maybe we’ve thought this verse means that when we’re praying and we aren’t using the right words, the Holy Spirit tells God what we really mean.  But (according to scholar James Dunn, the syntax tells us) it actually means, when we don’t even know what it is that we want, let alone how to ask for it, the Spirit groans with us and for us with a meaning known to God. When are trapped in confusion, and can’t even identify what to ask for.  When we have no idea what would help and we are just screaming inside our hearts, the Spirit intercedes, turning our silent screams into prayers for exactly what God knows we need.

This is such good news to me.
It’s hard to pray right now.
I don’t know what to pray for these days.
We like to tell God specifically what we want God to do for us.  Usually when we pray, we give God a little direction.  This isn’t bad; it’s just kind of cute.  When my daughter was three years old, she would stand on a stool next to the counter, watching me intently.  Pointing her little finger, she’d give me detailed, step by step instructions for how to make her toast.  As she told me how to do it, she’d also patiently remind me how she’d prefer it to turn out (lightly toasted, lots of butter, all the way to the edge).

We pray like this, as though God is a mom who ‘needs’ us to give her step-by-step instructions for how to do her job, and maybe has also forgotten our preferences and could use some helpful reminding of how we’d like it all to turn out.
We tell God things like, “please guide the surgeon’s hands”, “help her feel better”, “end the violence.” And we pray for God to do the things God already does, and be the things God already is. “God, bring your peace and comfort” “God, be with us here.”
This is all just fine. There’s nothing wrong with praying this way. (The Spirit translates these prayers too!) But sometimes, often, we ask way too small.  We pray in a “help us get through this” kind of way, when what God may want to do is more of a “use this to completely transform everything” kind of thing.

The bottom line is, prayer is something we’ve made overly complicated, and God hears us however we ask and whatever we say.  But what I absolutely love about this text is that Paul is telling us we don’t have to know what to ask for, and it’s ok if we can’t really find the words to say anything. We don’t even have to know what we really want from God. We just have to scream inside our hearts. And with sighs too deep for words—at a frequency maybe our ears can’t even hear—the Holy Spirit turns our silent screaming into prayer that God, who searches our hearts and knows the mind of the Spirit, hears and responds to.

I could stop there, and it would be enough for today. But it just keeps getting better.

We come next to a verse that has been widely misunderstood and misused.  “All things work together for good for those who love God.”  In utter contrast to the verses we just read, this feels so much like a shoulder-patting dismissal of deep suffering.  It sounds like a trite answer to hush the the deep groaning and sighing that we have just been told the Spirit takes up on our behalf.

And it feels exclusionary, like it’s saying, Hey – if you’re someone who loves God, and is lucky enough to be called according to God’s purposes, God will make sure everything that happens to you turns out good, so cheer up! 

But apparently our own human nervousness crept into the translations. (As the work of biblical scholars, especially Haley Goranson Jacobs and Brian Walsh, explains,) the original Greek actually says something like, “God works in all things for the good, together with those who love God.”

 First of all, it tells us God is actively working in all things.  Things themselves don’t work together for good - It’s not advocating an “everything will work out” approach to life.  There is a distinct actor here, and it’s God. In every situation, every moment, every conflict and especially in suffering, God works persistently and unrelentingly toward healing and wholeness and connection.

And second of all, our part, then, is not to just cross our fingers, paste on our smiles and and pat each other’s shoulders saying, One day this will feel better; God will make a bad thing turn out good, you’ll see.
Our place is to join God where God is working, to work together with God for the good, because “with those who love God, God works in all things for the good.”

This points back to what we were just talking about. When we are screaming inside our hearts at our own pain and the terrible suffering and injustice in the world, we are working together with God.  Miraslov Volf says, “we are being God-lovers, inspired by the Spirit to groan in such a way that God the heart-searcher knows what is going on. We are caught up in the love of God for the world, and it’s a painful love, because the world is in a mess.”
God will work for the good. And we will join in at the very place of the pain because that is where God’s Spirit is working.

Not only is suffering not worth comparing with the glory that is to come, like we heard last week, but suffering is something through which God is bringing new life. The cross reveals to us that in Christ God comes specifically intosuffering.  If you want to know where to find God, it’s in suffering.  Not just to share suffering, but to work in it and through it to bring new life.  God brings life out of death. That’s what God does. So we go to the death and we wail there at the agony of it, with insistent, expectant waiting for God’s new life to appear.

And we’re told that when we do, the Spirit—the same Spirit who hovers over the water at creation, whose breath becomes life in human lungs, who guides the people of God across the red sea and through the wilderness as a mighty pillar of fire at night and cloud by day, to the promised land, that same Spirit—is in us, groaning deeper than any of our words, for the salvation of the world, for an end to suffering, for the hope and promise of God to be fulfilled in our midst.  Our crying out in places of suffering joins in God’s work of redemption.

So here is what we will do: We will scream inside our hearts about the deep, pervasive cancer of racism that has been eating out the heart of this country since its inception, and we’ll work together with God to join the redemption God is bringing.

And we will scream inside our hearts about this sneaky disease that has shut down the world, and taken away from us the very things that help us stay human.  We’ll lament the absence of touching and spontaneous fun.  We’ll grieve the vacuum of human energy of gathered crowds, and the closeness of intimate conversations in restaurants, the joy of shared music and shared lockers, and the feel of hand holding and handshakes, not to mention the loss of each other’s faces, now modulated to each other by screens and blocked from one another by masks, paradoxically for each other.
And all the other places of despair within us, and conflict between us, that rise in us like a silent scream, the pain we have no words for, we will turn toward those places of suffering instead of fleeing them.  Addiction, illness, broken ties and broken futures, we will cry out about them.  And we wont worry about trying to tell God what we think God should do to solve the world’s problems, or even our own.  Because our solutions will undoubtedly be too small and short-sighted anyway.  We’d suggest repair and renovation to a God who specializes in resurrecting the dead.

So we’ll let that pressure go—to solve it all for God, or to be strong prayer warriors, or to even the pressure to have words.  We’ll go into our weakness, where we have no idea how to pray, and we’ll just bravely wait there, with our screams and groans, sharing the heart of God and letting the Spirit translate it all into prayers for God bring new life into our death. And we will trust, that in everything, God works together with us for an outcome shaped not by our limited imaginations, but by God’s limitless love.

Amen.


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let's try praying with fewer words. Instead of telling God what we want God to do, let's just lift up the things we are carrying by saying only the single word or phrase that expresses the need (a person's name, a situation). Pause... Then move to the next word or phrase.

God,
...
Amen.

What are you waiting for?

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 24

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

As a pastor, I have the distinct and unique benefit of also being the proofreader and theological sounding board to a prolific theologian. The section of Andy's latest manuscript that we worked through today talked about waiting. I wrote about waiting in a devotion back in May.  It’s July, and we are still waiting.

Waiting, Andy discussed, is always waiting for something. There is no waiting that isn't directed at some end.  We wait for a bus, or for our food at a restaurant, or wait for an answer to our college application, job interview, or offer on a house.

Because waiting is for something, imagining being stuck waiting, with no end or goal, feels awful.  He uses the example of prison - where the only thing someone is waiting for is for the waiting to be over. 

Right now, as a whole country, we don’t have a for to be waiting for. Are we waiting the pandemic to “end”? (What would that even look like?) A vaccine to be found? (distributed widely?) School to start? (meaning what??) The economy to recover? (??)  Life to get back to “normal”-? We don’t know what the end of our waiting will look like, or when it might come.  We are pandemic prisoners, waiting for our waiting to be over.

And yet, as I said in May, the church's job is to wait. We're called to this.  And we do know what we’re waiting for.   Christian waiting is shaped by the recognition that at any moment God might break in and meet us right here.  We wait for encounter with God. We wait for the justice God is bringing, and the peace God is bringing, and we wait actively, by living those realities now, even as they are not yet fully here.  We sit in the places of suffering and despair, of injustice or emptiness, and we wait for God together, alongside each other. With the world. For the world. Our waiting is active, hopeful. We know God is coming, is always coming into our death experiences with resurrection and new life. We don’t know when or how God might come, might bring redemption in small or big ways to the situations in which we wait. But that is part of the wait too. We watch, we trust, we hope, we wait.

Sabbath prepares us for this. By regularly putting down our doing and purposely spending time in being we are cultivating our waiting. Sabbath is meant to help us step out of the way of fear long enough to recognize its emptiness and inability to fulfill us.  It’s meant to shift us back into a way of life that waits expectantly every day, every moment, for God to show up and do something.

Normally, we are always filling up our life with busyness, so we don't have to be still, and uncomfortable. Busyness buffers us from waiting and wonder what we’re waiting for, or whether what we’re waiting for is worth the wait.  Modern people have mistaken fullness for busyness, so we get busier and busier, and make our lives fuller and fuller, which only makes them feel more and more empty. Normally, we’re too busy to really be in our lives. We're so busy doing, we forget our being and our belonging.

Now we are not in our lives, as they were. But we are in a season of waiting. 

It may be helpful in this season, to reflect on what we are actually waiting for, and what we hope will come.  Perhaps we may need to face that what we're waiting for either won't arrive or won't satisfy us when it does.

Are we waiting to return to a way of life that kept us from living a full life because we packed it too full?

We are made for fullness of life, to live in our belonging, connected to God and each other. We pause and rest regularly in order to remember that and return to it, and hopefully take that awareness into the rest of our week, so that it might shape our lives.

Now we are paused indefinitely, and we are waiting.

But can we let this pause help us remember and return to our true belonging and life meaning? Can we live in the Christian waiting we are called too?  Can we wait trusting that God comes in, that God is already here, and that our lives, our world, our nation, our communities, can be and are the place God is bringing salvation, in small and big ways, even every day?  Can we watch in the despair and pain, in the suffering and the anxiety, for the activity of God?

 This pandemic wait is longer than anyone thought it would be, and it's going to go on a whole lot longer.  Waiting only for the waiting to end is torture.

But this Christian waiting lasts a lifetime.  And waiting for the inbreaking of God is active, and hopeful, and joins in the transformation the Spirit is always bringing into the world.

These words of T.S. Elliott, from Four Quartets, speak to me today:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

For more:

Here is May’s post about waiting.

Here is a podcast Andy did about these themes.

And here is a reflection on sabbath lessons for this pandemic time.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:


God, the waiting is so hard.
What am I waiting for, really?
I think I am waiting for...
because I am telling myself...


God help me wait for you.
Help me watch for you.
Help me sense your presence.
Help me follow your guidance.
Help me join in your Kingdom,
breaking in now,
all around me,
moving the whole story,
toward life and fullness.
Teach me to wait.
Make me someone who waits,
hopeful and brave.
Amen.

Looking more closely

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 23

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Last night Maisy called me into her room. She'd had a rough day,  feeling down and despondent for most of it.  But I could see when I entered her room that something had shifted.  Her eyes sparkled when she said, "Hey mom, I was just talking to my friend Greta, and I asked her how she is such a content and happy person so much of the time. She told me its gratitude. She tries every day to notice all the things she's thankful for. I just did it, and Mom, it really works!"

"That's great, honey!" I replied. Then, in typical Maisy-style, never letting me be a bystander but pulling me into life, she said, "You try it now. Just look around and name what you're thankful for in your head."
Then she watched me expectantly.

So I did it.

I looked around the room and felt thankful for the roof over our head and a strong sturdy house, and noted that I really am thankful for that. When I turned back my eyes fell on the dog, and then slid onto Maisy.  I was surprised to feel a heart-squeeze of deep gratitude. She nodded, smiling. I could see in her eyes that she knew I was thanking God for her and for Khaleesi.
I smiled at her and left her room, letting my mind go already to more things I felt grateful for.

Wouldn't you know it, Maisy was right. Suddenly being told to name what I was thankful for, and obeying for just 60 seconds, pulled me into a different headspace and heartspace for a moment. It changed how I prayed for her when I returned to kiss her goodnight and and put her to bed. It changed how I laid my tired self down put myself to bed. Just a little bit more aware, a tad bit more in touch with the mystery it is to be alive at all.

It's nice to be given a liturgy by a couple of 13 year olds. (That's Church!)  Also, we have this practice deeply embedded in our Christian faith. I think of Eva's favorite hymn, "Count your Blessings..." and of countless theologians and mystics before Eva who've turned to gratitude as a way to stay grounded in God's bigger picture.

Specifically, I love the work of Brother David Steindl-Rast on gratefulness, and I will send anyone who is interested a copy of his book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer.  It's excellent. I'm serious that I will mail you one if tell me you want one.
(So tell me. Do it).

True gratitude doesn't deny what's in front of us, it looks more closely into what's in front of us and into ourselves, for the Kingdom of God. It assumes we can already taste the Kingdom of God, catch glimpses of it.  It assumes God made the world good and goodness is all around us.  To rejoice in the good doesn't deny the evil or the brokenness is there, it acknowledges all that is here, but that means we acknowledge the goodness too.  And we direct that acknowledgment at its source.  Gratitude is one of the shortcuts out of the Way of Fear and back to the Way of God. (False cheerfulness and platitudes are not).

In the meantime, here are some things I am grateful for this week, that I want to share with you.

This conversation with David Steindl-Rast, about gratefulness.

This Krysta Tippett interview with Pauline Boss about "Ambiguous Loss", which is loss without any promise of a resolution -  how that impacts us and how we can navigate it.  (I shared an introduction to it in the "prayer and poem" section of this week's announcements).

Finally Theresa Latini wrote this lovely reflection on masks, along with a blessing for masks that she uses with Eleanor whenever they leave the house with their masks.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight, I will let Maisy direct us in prayer.
Simply stop wherever you are and look around.
Start naming the things you feel thankful for - they can be big or little, silly or deep, just start listing them.
Being still in place and noticing is simply the starting point - let your mind wander out of the room to other things you are thankful for too.

Don't just say, "I'm thankful for..." - thought that's a terrific start.  Try saying, "God, thank you for..." and speak right to the God who is present here with you.

. . .
When you are finished, listen in the silence for a response.
. . .

Amen.