Sermon: Finding home (March 6, 2016)

Lent 4C

March 6, 2016

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

            I’ve been very aware this week of being at the halfway point in our journey. Halfway can be a really good thing – it feels like an accomplishment, gives you a marker, and an enthusiasm to keep going. But it can also be a really tiring thing, because it makes you feel sort of… lost. You’re right in the thick of it. You’re as far from the beginning as you are from the end, and so you have to keep going somewhere: keep going through the end, or revert back to where you were when you started. I saw a video recently of this horrifying new glass suspension bridge in China. It is 600 feet above the valley floor beneath, and nearly 1000 feet long, and due to its height and length, it gently sways, even as you can see the distance down below your feet. Can you imagine being halfway across that? As far from the beginning as you are from the end? Yeesh, heebie-jeebies!

            My feelings of being halfway through the Lenten journey are not quite that extreme, of course. But they are worth noticing. I am profoundly aware – more so now that we’re halfway through than I was when we began – of what it is like to be wandering.

            Wandering can take many forms in our lives. Maybe we are like the Israelites in the wilderness, searching for a place to call home, even as we learn, day by day, more about who we are and who God is calling us to be in this world. I have seen this in people who bounce from job to job, relationship to relationship, and even town to town, searching for something that feels life-giving and comfortable, before finally landing somewhere that feels like the right place, the place God has called you.

Or maybe we are wanderers like the younger brother in today’s famous parable of the prodigal son, who leaves the safety and comfort of his home and his family to wander in search of something more interesting, only to discover that what he sought was back where he started. If I recall, I felt this as one of the symptoms of the “senior-itis” I contracted my senior year in high school, and then had a recurrence my last year in college. Both times, I felt a need to figure out something about myself, and I knew that I wouldn’t find it where I was, but that if I went looking, I might figure out it. Though I didn’t engage in “dissolute living” like the son in the story, I did go 2000 miles away from home to college, and then upped the ante and went to even further, all the way to Slovakia, for a year after college. And after all that, I ended up back at my dad’s alma mater, pursuing the very same career in ministry that three generations in my family had before me. Like the prodigal son, I eventually came home: back to what was familiar to me.

Or maybe your wandering is only in your mind, as your body stays in one place – like the older brother in today’s parable. He dutifully stays home, working hard for his father like he is supposed to, but his reaction to his brother’s antics and free spirit point to his resentment of this fact. I wonder if he spent his days dreaming of having the courage to leave, too? I wonder if his resentment of his brother is really jealousy, because he feels trapped where he is, but longs to venture out on some wandering of his own?

            Whatever form it takes, wandering can be exciting, but it can also be terribly lonely, and at the end of the day it can leave you feeling like you don’t belong anywhere or to anyone, that you don’t really have a home. And home, and a genuine sense of belonging – is that not what we all, ultimately, long for? How, then, do we get there? How can we even know what home and belonging look like?

            Today’s famous parable helps us figure it out. The Prodigal Son, of course, of one of the most

Rembrandt's famous portrayal of
The Return of the Prodigal Son

well-known and one of the richest of Jesus’ parables. It’s got rebellion, scandal, disappointment, jealousy, resentment – all these things that are all too familiar in our broken, human experience – and of course, it ends with not one, but two extravagant expressions of love and grace. A wayward son makes his way back home, literally covered in the stinking shame of his mistakes (presumably, he didn’t get a shower before his last day feeding the pigs!). He is unclean: physically, spiritually, and ritually. He is also prepared with a speech outlining his wrong-doing, in which he will ask his father to take him back, not into the position he previously held, as a son and inheritor, but as a mere hired hand. He assumed home would have to be something different now. But to our shock, and the shock of anyone watching, this dignified landowner does the most undignified thing possible: he runs out to meet his pig feces-covered son and throws his arms around him. He plans a grand celebration for his return. He dresses him in fine array.

            He is home, and home looks like nothing he could have imagined or hoped for. It looks like undeserved forgiveness. It looks like extravagant celebration. It looks like immediate belonging. I think this would all be a lot to take for this man who expected only to become a hired hand for the man he had betrayed!

            But the extravagance doesn’t end there. Not everyone is happy about the return of the lost son. I’m sure many of us identify with the older brother, watching the father’s response and thinking, “But that’s not fair.” Now it is no longer the younger son who is lost, but the older. He had an idea of what home, what life, should be like, and that was duty and righteousness. You work hard, and you get what you deserve. And now the father was throwing that all away in his lavish welcome of this younger son who was not dutiful, nor righteous. We humans have a strong reaction to things that “aren’t fair.” Just this week in confirmation, we were talking about things that make us mad, and pretty much everyone agreed that one thing that makes us mad is when things aren’t fair – whether that is on a small scale, like you do something nice and don’t get credit for it, or a large scale, like an entire town getting lead poisoning from their water because the elected leaders wanted to save a few bucks. Life should be fair, and we do not like it when it isn’t. It makes us mad, like it did the older brother when his father extended such a warm and celebratory welcome to this irresponsible prodigal.

            Yet even in the midst of this older son’s anger and resentment, the father extends radical welcome to him, too. He goes to the son. He invites him to join the celebration. He, the father, wants all to be at home, wants all of his children in his embrace – both those who are extreme and obvious in their wandering, and those who only wander in their minds, as they stew about how the world is not how it should be and blame everyone else for that reality.

            Because you see, this is home. This is belonging. It is being welcomed even when you don’t

deserve welcome. It is God opening his arms to receive you just as soon as you appear on the horizon. It is being accepted and invited, even by a God who sees the resentment in your heart. It is those words we hear at the beginning of worship: “your sins are forgiven.” It is coming forward to this feast, this celebration, putting your hands out, and knowing that whether you deserve it or not (and let’s be honest, none of us really deserve this), God is going to offer you grace, love, and belonging in this family of Christ. The home that God welcomes us into is full of scandal – it is the scandal of welcoming sinners and prodigals, and guilt-ridden repentants who are covered head to foot in their shame, and those who fancy themselves righteous but who, in fact, stand back to silently judge the others. That God would open arms to all of those – all of us – and celebrate our return home is indeed a scandal that is not in any way fair. But grace is not fair. That’s why all of us are welcome here: because God’s invitation for us to come home is bigger and more gracious than we could ever imagine or hope for.

            Let us pray… Prodigal God, you are irresponsibly gracious, extravagantly loving, and indiscriminately welcoming – even though we don’t deserve any of it. Bring us into your loving embrace, and as you make us grateful that we find our home in you, also help us to extend that sense of home and belonging to all of your children. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On the edge of the Promised Land

This is my reflection for last night's midweek Lenten evening prayer:

Numbers 13:17-27 (NRSV)

 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, ‘Go up there into the Negeb, and go up into the hill country, and see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land they live in is good or bad, and whether the towns that they live in are unwalled or fortified,and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be bold, and bring some of the fruit of the land.’ Now it was the season of the first ripe grapes.

 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. They went up into the Negeb, and came to Hebron; and Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the Anakites, were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) And they came to the Wadi Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs. That place was called the Wadi Eshcol, because of the cluster that the Israelites cut down from there.

 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, ‘We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.'

~~~

There they were: on the edge of the Promised Land. After making what was a fairly direct journey from Egypt, through the Red Sea, across the desert: here they stood. How did that feel, I wonder? To be right on the edge of God’s promise? To be so close they could practically taste the milk and honey on their tongue?

Yet the Israelites proceeded with caution. Since Jacob’s sons left the land first given to Abraham, the land of Canaan had become occupied by others, and the Israelites needed to get a sense of what they were getting into, rather than march right in. Following God’s command, they sent in spies to check things out and get a lay of the land. After 40 days of spying, the leaders from each tribe discover that this land is really, very good land. And they come back to tell everyone so, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Well at least that’s what today’s lectionary reading would have us believe! The reading appointed for today leaves us with such hope – “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey! It is fruitful!”

Ah, but that is not where their report ends; the lectionary cuts it off prematurely. “YET,” they go on. “YET, we saw the people there, and they are big and scary. There’s no way we can overtake them.” Isn’t there always a “yet”? Isn’t there always some fear that would keep us from (in their case, literally) living in God’s promises?

We are halfway through our Lenten pilgrimage. If your journey has been anything like mine, you started out pretty strong, then you got too busy, or too distracted, or too bored to continue with quite the same enthusiasm. Or, if your journey is really like mine, you might have caught a glimpse of the Promised Land, that place where, at the beginning of this journey you said, “I would like for my relationship with God to look like that,” but now, as you stand on the edge of the Land, you see nothing but obstacles.

·                   “I know I could have a more meaningful prayer life, YET it takes a lot of time and changing my daily routine is hard and oh, just forget it. I’m fine here in the wilderness.”

·                   “I know I could work for reconciliation with that person, YET it requires me to face some difficult truths about myself and admit to things I don’t want to admit to. I’ve survived this long with this burden, and I’m not really interested in doing the soul searching this next step would require, so… I’m fine here in the wilderness.”

·                   “I know I could start making some difficult decisions about the next step my life is going to take, YET it would require disappointing some people and I don’t know if I will find as much satisfaction in the new life, so… I’ll just continue on as I always have. I know it can’t last forever, but I can put it off a little longer, and stay in the wilderness.”

The Israelites decide that the YET and the fears and the uncertainty are stronger than God’s promise to take care of them. Caleb and Joshua want to trust God, but no one else does. They are too afraid of those big obstacles. They do not trust God.

In her book, Walk in a Relaxed Manner, Joyce Rupp describes several lessons she learned while walking the Camino de Santiago. One of them was to “trust in the divine companion.” She relates the long list of fears she had, walking this long journey: everything from not being able to find lodging, to feeling lonely, to someone at home dying while she was away, to her body not holding up for the journey. Her traveling companion had his own set of fears and anxieties as well. Then one day they remember the Spanish phrase, “Primero Dios.” God first. They begin offering this phrase to each other whenever one of them becomes apprehensive about anything. Primero Dios. God first.

One night in particular, they really started to doubt they would find a place to stay and food to eat. By the end of the night, however, they ended up having the most fun, most incredible meal they had on the entire journey. After the fact, she has this to say: “The experience of that evening meal taught me a lot about believing in God’s care especially when external conditions point to the opposite. I became aware of how quickly my trust falters when things do not go as I hope. I too easily become discouraged when things do not go my way. To trust means relinquishing some of my strong need to have control when I face uncertainty and insecurity. My own strong efforts do not completely guarantee I will have inner serenity and peace.” But, she goes on, “The Camino reinforced a major lesson of life: the heart of the pilgrim journey is not about being anxious and fretful. It is about putting God first and trusting in this abiding presence and providence.”

As they stood on the edge of the Promised Land, the Israelites were not able to do this. They saw the possibilities God was offering, then let their “YET” make the final decision. As a result, God sent them back into the wilderness for 40 more years, wandering about long enough for that unbelieving generation to pass away.

What about us? At this point, halfway through our journey, will we see the Promised Land – with all its fruitfulness along with the fear and uncertainty of entering it – and doubt the providence and protection of God? Or will we say with confidence, “Primero Dios!” and face those fears, trusting in the God who brings beginnings out of endings, and goodness out of evil, and life out death?

Let us pray… God of promise, even though we know your promises are good, we are sometimes afraid to move into them. Show us the Promised Land, but show us also that you will be with us as we enter into it, granting us safety and new life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: On suffering and cleansing (Lent 3C, Feb. 28, 16)

Lent 3C

February 28, 2016

2 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

            Since we began in January, there is a steady group of us who are diligently reading our Daily Bible every day, in hopes of making it all the way to the end by December. I have to say, I’m really proud of the folks who are sticking with it, because the Old Testament, which of course is where we started, can be incredibly difficult to digest. The early years of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, is when God has first given them the Law, and is when God is trying to establish them as God’s chosen. As a result, God appears to be quite harsh when laws are broken. Paul refers to a couple of the harsher stories in our reading from 1^st Corinthians – the time when people practiced sexual immorality and 23,000 people were struck dead in one day, or the time a bunch of folks were killed by serpents. It’s not easy stuff to take! For a couple weeks there, we talked a lot about punishment, and the question that kept coming up in Bible study was, “Is suffering God’s punishment for our sin?”

Every time that question comes up, I feel uneasy. I don’t want to think about our God of love as a God who punishes. It troubles me on a personal level, but it also troubles me on a larger level, because that theology makes it too easy to blame the victim, to point fingers, to say, “Well that person had it coming. He deserved it.” And as soon as we point the finger at someone else, it becomes easier to let ourselves off the hook. Or maybe, if we look a little more deeply, pointing the finger and blaming the victim makes it easier to ignore our own responsibility in a difficult reality, or even to ignore the question that is really nagging at our hearts: “Will God – or is God already – punishing me for something? Is that why I’m suffering like I am right now?”

            Assuming suffering is punishment for sin seems like such an easy answer to a difficult situation – and complex problems never have easy solutions. And this particular easy answer leads us down a troubling path. Applied to other people’s suffering, it only leads to blame and hate and fear. It gives us all the more reason to hate and disregard the “other,” because we can write them off with, “Well, they just got what was coming to them.” Applied to our own suffering, it leads to self-loathing and hopelessness, to a sense that we are not worth much to God. Either way, the possibility of God punishing us according to the severity of our sins is never a path that leads to life.

            Lucky for us, Jesus puts the kibosh on this theology straight away. The people come to him in today’s gospel reading with a couple of recent calamities of the day: one in which Pilate slaughtered some Galileans while they were presenting their offerings, and one in which a tower, a part of the Temple, crumbled, killing 18 people who were standing below. Horrifying tragedies, which the people are trying to make some sense of. We can relate – how many tragic shootings, for example, have we had in the past year, and each time we scramble to make sense of them, blaming this religion, or that law, or those people. That tendency is just as true in our personal lives, where we and our loved ones are faced with challenging diagnoses, sudden deaths, and losses that turn life on its head, and leave us wondering, “What did I do to deserve this?” It’s no surprise that the people in Jesus’ time are concerned about these tragedies; we have felt the same way!

            But Jesus takes each one of them and says, “You think that was punishment for sin? It wasn’t, I assure you! These people’s sin was no less or greater than anyone else’s.”

At first I am relieved to hear it. But then I am once again troubled: if not that, Jesus, then why? Why this trauma? I expect him to go on and explain – after all, the question of the origin and reason for suffering is the question every major religion tries to answer! What a great opportunity for him to take that question head on! But instead of giving us a reason that will help us sleep at night, Jesus offers us this: “But unless you repent, you will all perish like they did.”

            Come again, Jesus? This is your explanation for suffering? That we’d better buck up if we don’t want to end up like these unfortunate people? I’m not sure I like this theology any better!

            But then Jesus goes on – and in this strange little parable is where we hear a word of grace. A

fig tree has been barren, a waste of the soil it’s planted in. The landowner, being an efficient man, tells the gardener to tear it out. The gardener, though, sees its potential. “Give it another year,” he says. “I’ll tend to it and give it some extra help, and next year, I think, it will be better. If not, then you can cut it down.”

            I admit when I first read this, I wasn’t sure if this was good news or not. My first inclination is to assume we are meant to be the fig trees who are not bearing fruit, and God is the landowner wanting to be rid of us. That would fit with the punishing God so prevalent in the Old Testament, the one Paul refers to in his letter to the Corinthians. To me, even as someone who thrives under a deadline, hearing an ultimatum like, “You’ve got one year to buck up or get out,” does not make me feel loved by God.

            But the beauty of parables is that there is not just one way to interpret them, and often if you just turn it a little and look at it from a different angle, you can get a completely different meaning. So try this: instead of the angry landowner being God, ready to do away with us, perhaps the landowner is all the voices in our head telling us that we deserve the suffering we have been given. God, then, becomes the compassionate gardener, the one who is certain that, if given more time and some TLC, even this worthless, waste-of-soil fig tree (a.k.a. you and I) can be well and bear fruit.

            Suddenly, our hopeless, blame- and fear-inducing theology of sin and punishment becomes a theology of grace and compassion, a life of faith in which there is hope for the hopeless, in which God does care for us and in fact, actively works to bring us back into God’s loving embrace. Now, Jesus’ declaration of the need to repent becomes not a threat, but a way forward, a way out of hopelessness. It is no longer, “Repent or die,” but rather, “Repent, and live! Repent, and find a path to life, a path to God!”

            Repentance is also not an easy answer, of course. For it requires a good hard look at your heart, and seeing what might be growing in there that you hadn’t seen before can be a shock.

Maybe you’ve seen on the news orsocial media that several people have discovered in their children’s sippy cups that inside a part of the lid that is unwashable, there has been mold growing. People are posting pictures of the horrors they found once they cracked open these sippy cups: mold that was making their children constantly sick. As I grimaced at the grossness people didn’t even

know was there, making their vulnerable children sick, it struck me: what if my heart is like that? What if I took a hammer to the lid of my heart, cracked it open, and saw that there was something growing in there, that I wasn’t even aware of, that is making me sick, that contaminates every swallow I try to take in an effort to quench my spiritual thirst? Something that is keeping me from enjoying a life of fullness in the grace of God?

            “Repent, or you will perish,” Jesus says. And now I believe him. Because without taking that good, hard look at our own hearts, and asking Jesus, as we do during Lent, to “create in us clean hearts,” we will go on suffering until we perish, because our hearts – moldy and grimy from all the pain and suffering we have endured – taint and contaminate the way we see life. Repent, Jesus advises, and come out with clean hearts. Repent, and your barrenness will become fruitfulness.

            And the best news of all? Jesus is there, with us and for us. He is that gardener, tending the soil around our roots, nourishing it and making sure it is getting all that it needs to be fruitful. He is the gardener, pleading for another chance for us, speaking up to all those voices that would love to tear us down, and assuring instead that we will, eventually, blossom and bear fruit – assuring us that, with Jesus’ loving touch, there will be new life.

            Let us pray… God our gardener, tend the soil of our hearts. Help us to see what prevents us from growing closer to you. Help us to rid our hearts of that which keeps us from bearing fruit, so that we may continue our walk toward your cross, and toward the new life that you bring to us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon: Yes! I shall see the goodness of our God (Feb. 21, 2016)

Lent 2C

Feb. 21, 2016

Psalm 27, Genesis 15:1-12

            “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes! I shall see the goodness of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord!”

            When I sing this I am transported back to the hills of Burgundy, France, to the little village of Taize, where there is an ecumenical monastery. It was founded during World War II as a place to shelter refugees, many of whom were Jewish, and eventually also orphaned children and German prisoners of war. Today it is home to over 100 brothers, Catholic and Protestant, from about 30 different countries. It draws pilgrims from around the world, especially youth; each year, 100,000 young people travel to spend a week or more at Taize, where they participate in sung prayer three times a day, engage in Bible study, work around the camp to keep it running, and learn Taize’s principles of kindness, simplicity, and reconciliation.

Taize: my friend Jenny and I (spring, 2009)

            I have been blessed to travel twice to this beautiful little community, and as I said, those words I began with characterize my time there. “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes! I shall see the goodness of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord!” They are words that come from today’s Psalm. Both times I was there, I was in a time of life where these words brought such consolation to my searching heart, and as I repeatedly sang them (as is the style of Taize worship), it was with earnestness and longing. I sang them because they were already true, and because I wanted to believe them to be true. I was a pilgrim in search of the goodness of the Lord I knew was there, even as I sometimes struggled to see that goodness.

            This is not a new feeling for people of faith, this feeling of both knowing something is true, even as you still long to see it be true in your life. Just look at Abraham in today’s reading from Genesis. We often think of Abraham (or Abram, as he is still called at this point) as the very example of deep trust and faith. And yet here, he has trouble holding onto that trust. God says, “Don’t worry, Abram, I got this! I’ll make good on my promise to give you many descendants. Your waiting will be well worth it in the end, and I’ll protect you in the meantime.” And two times Abraham replies, “Really? What are you going to give me to prove it? Because so far, you totally haven’t delivered on your promises, and I’m beginning to think that my servant is going to have to inherit everything, because I’m old, and I don’t see an heir yet.” In the words of his mouth, we can hear the pleading of his heart: “I want to believe you, God, that you’ll bring about your promises, but I’m having a really hard time with that right now. You gotta give me something, anything to hold onto here.”

            And who of us has not had that prayer before? When we are faced with a difficult situation, or a fearful one, and we cannot make sense of it – we want to believe that God has something good in mind, but in the darkness of the moment, we have a really hard time seeing what that might be. Or we have been the recipient of a number of difficult blows and can barely believe anymore that any of God’s promises are true, that the words we read in scripture hold any water.

            It’s a tension we see in today’s Psalm, too. Psalm 27 begins with utter confidence: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom, then, shall I fear?” For six verses it goes on in utter confidence… but in verse seven, the tone changes, almost as if it is a completely different Psalm: “Hear my voice when I call. Have mercy on me and answer me.” Suddenly it becomes a Psalm of desperation and pleading, and for the next six verses, it lacks its previous confidence. It is the song of

Taize: Front of sanctuary

a heart longing to see some evidence that God does, in fact, make good on God’s promises.

            Somehow, though, the Psalmist makes his way back in those last two verses to a resolution to believe in those words that, centuries later, became a Taize chant: “This I believe: that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, and be strong. Take heart and wait for the Lord!” How does he get from despair back to assurance? How do we?

            I think the key is in verse 8: “My heart speaks your message: ‘Seek my face.’ Your face, O Lord, I will seek.” Last week I asked you to name what is your current wilderness, and what Promised Land you seek. Full disclosure: for me, this is it. It is to seek God’s face, or said another way, to be more intentional and focused on noticing and naming God’s action in my life, to not only see God’s face in my day-to-day life, but to be more intentional about seeking it.

One of the ways I am doing that is a method I shared with some of you at our midweek service this past week, and that is by doing a daily examen. The examen is a spiritual practice describedby St. Ignatius of Loyola, which is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of the day, in order to detect God’s presence in it. In essence, you begin each day by naming some people and things you want to hold in prayer throughout the day, and at the end of each day, you take time to name and even to write down reflections on these two questions: For what today was I most grateful? For what was I least grateful? Asked another way, when did I give or receive the most love today? When did I give or receive the least love? When did I feel the most alive? When did I feel life draining out of me? When was I joyful? When was I sad? And through all of this the question becomes: And where was God in this? At the end of the week, I look over what I have written down each week and find how God might be speaking to me through that prayerful reflection.

I hope, even as I already believe, that in doing this, I am seeking God’s face. I hope and pray that others who might be participating in this practice feel the same. But I’ll tell you – seeing God’s face is not at first a really lovely experience. Already by doing this, I have become aware of habits and perspectives I need to change, because they are keeping me from living as wholly in God’s love and promises as I could be. And change is never easy, and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it takes away a safety net or a coping mechanism you’ve come to rely on. And all that can be very painful at first. Spiritual growth is like that.

This week I came across a quote that seemed to speak directly to me on my Lenten pilgrimage. I share it with you because I think it might resonate with you as well. It says: “The Lenten walk is one of release, of letting go of our own plans, of welcoming the death which will be our new life. We never know exactly where the walk to Jerusalem will lead us – even if we’ve walked it many times before. It is always a mystery, a venture into the very heart of God. At first we might make plans of how we’re going to live into the new life, but soon we learn these plans are in vain – and we abandon them. This is not what we were expecting. It never is. There’s a very good

reason we weren’t expecting this – because God’s vision is far more expansive than anything we can imagine.” [The Labyrinth Way,thelabyrinthway.net/darkness-deepens]

God’s vision is far more expansive than anything we can imagine. Expansive like the stars. Expansive like the wilderness. So expansive that it is impossible to see everything we want to see from our meager vantage point. It is so hard to trust when you can’t see the end of God’s plan. Yet Abraham did, and he became the father of a nation that continues to grow. The Psalmist did. And I believe that we, even as we are still in the chaos of our wilderness journey toward the Promised Land, can also trust that that chaos is merely a piece of the grand, expansive vision that God has in mind for us.

Let us pray… I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes! I shall see the goodness of our God. Hold firm, trust in the Lord. (sing 3x) In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.