Today's readings: Ps 22, 148; Ez 18:1-4, 25-32; Phil 4:1-9; John 17:9-19
In the days before GPS and MapQuest, it was common for people embarking on a long car trip to visit AAA or another travel agent to get customized route maps (AAA still calls them TripTiks). An atlas could only get you so far before you needed additional city and street maps for the local details. Today we just click on “zoom.” But past or present, we need to know the end point of our journey to get directions. Our Lenten journey doesn’t work quite that way.
Our Lenten journey ends with resurrection – Easter – and we know the annual stories and readings that act as signposts throughout the season. But if our end point is a living, contemporary, present Christ, simply retracing 2000 year old steps – no matter how sacred – won’t get us there. Plenty of us are intimately familiar with Christ’s journey, yet stuck spinning our wheels. Without knowing direction resurrection may take in our own lives, how can we know in what direction to start our journey?
Ezekiel knows. The prophet advises his listeners the way forward is to repent – literally, to “turn around” their lives. A journey can begin because we have somewhere to go to – or somewhere to leave from. Even if we don’t know where we will end up, we generally know what in our lives we need to walk away from. Of course knowing is much easier than doing. Abuse, addiction, anger – if these things were easy to leave, Ezekiel could have kept his day job. It’s easier to stay in a bad or even dangerous yet familiar situation than to walk the unknown road. Rather than following a prescribed map, we find ourselves in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” scenario, where each choice leads us down an unknown path. We hope for a happy ending, but if things don’t work out, we can retrace our steps and begin again. And God will travel with us every time.
No matter how much we might like it to be so, faith is not a matter of following someone else’s maps, no matter how beautifully they’ve been drawn. God calls us to the uncharted territory of broken places – our own and others – and to the kingdom of wholeness waiting beyond.
Comfort: All steps taken in faith are in the right direction.
Challenge: Start a “travel journal” to map your Lenten adventures.
Prayer: God of the journey, thank you for trusting me to go new places.
Evening readings: Ps 105, 130
Discussion question:
Is there anywhere you both desire and fear to go?
Showing posts with label uncertainty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uncertainty. Show all posts
Friday, February 24, 2012
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Joy of Uncertainty
Today's readings: Ps 102; Hos 10:1-15; Acts 21:37-22:16; Luke 6:12-26
The passage beginning with Luke 6:17 and ending with verse 49 is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain. It parallels many of the themes of the better known and more comprehensive Sermon on the Mount found in chapters 5-7 of Matthew. Verses 20-26 contain a list of blessings and woes that sound very much like the Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-11). This list describes a reversal of fortune in which the afflicted will be comforted, and the comfortable will be afflicted. The images were jarring to their original audience, and can be difficult to interpret and apply today.
When we hear “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (v. 25), does it mean we should go hungry? Is the Realm of God a world in which all people are meant to be hungry? What if we are the hungry, and through the grace of God we become full? Into which camp – the blessed hungry or the cursed full – do we then belong?
A simple approach to these questions might be to say if we are full (or rich, or laughing, or popular) at the expense of others, woe to us. A more thought-provoking, and possibly more useful, approach might be to say we should never be completely certain which camp we are in. We would be foolish and ungrateful to reject gifts like a good meal or a roof to sleep under. After all, Jesus encourages us to provide these things to the poor. However, we would be equally (if not more) foolish to believe such gifts mark us as specially favored by God. The type of blessing Jesus speaks of in this passage is a state of right relationship with God. When we become complacent or take this relationship for granted, the relationship will suffer. Too much certainty our poverty is a sign of God’s favor is no better than a belief that material comfort is evidence of the same thing. This tension in the relationship helps us actively evaluate and fine-tune it throughout our lives.
Unwavering certainty in our own state of righteousness – or sinfulness – closes us off from the transformational grace of Christ in our lives, and in the lives of others. The gift of uncertainty keeps us humble seekers, always ready to discover Christ in new ways.
Comfort: The less we think we know, the better we can know God.
Challenge: Contrast the ways in which you are poor and rich.
Prayer: Glorious Creator, thank you for a relationship that always grows.
Evening readings: Ps 107:1-32
Tomorrow's readings: Ps 107:33-43, 108; Hos 11:1-9; Acts 22:17-29; Luke 6:27-38
The passage beginning with Luke 6:17 and ending with verse 49 is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain. It parallels many of the themes of the better known and more comprehensive Sermon on the Mount found in chapters 5-7 of Matthew. Verses 20-26 contain a list of blessings and woes that sound very much like the Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-11). This list describes a reversal of fortune in which the afflicted will be comforted, and the comfortable will be afflicted. The images were jarring to their original audience, and can be difficult to interpret and apply today.
When we hear “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (v. 25), does it mean we should go hungry? Is the Realm of God a world in which all people are meant to be hungry? What if we are the hungry, and through the grace of God we become full? Into which camp – the blessed hungry or the cursed full – do we then belong?
A simple approach to these questions might be to say if we are full (or rich, or laughing, or popular) at the expense of others, woe to us. A more thought-provoking, and possibly more useful, approach might be to say we should never be completely certain which camp we are in. We would be foolish and ungrateful to reject gifts like a good meal or a roof to sleep under. After all, Jesus encourages us to provide these things to the poor. However, we would be equally (if not more) foolish to believe such gifts mark us as specially favored by God. The type of blessing Jesus speaks of in this passage is a state of right relationship with God. When we become complacent or take this relationship for granted, the relationship will suffer. Too much certainty our poverty is a sign of God’s favor is no better than a belief that material comfort is evidence of the same thing. This tension in the relationship helps us actively evaluate and fine-tune it throughout our lives.
Unwavering certainty in our own state of righteousness – or sinfulness – closes us off from the transformational grace of Christ in our lives, and in the lives of others. The gift of uncertainty keeps us humble seekers, always ready to discover Christ in new ways.
Comfort: The less we think we know, the better we can know God.
Challenge: Contrast the ways in which you are poor and rich.
Prayer: Glorious Creator, thank you for a relationship that always grows.
Evening readings: Ps 107:1-32
Tomorrow's readings: Ps 107:33-43, 108; Hos 11:1-9; Acts 22:17-29; Luke 6:27-38
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