wholeness

Dismantled

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 56; 149, Jeremiah 52:1-34, 1 Corinthians 15:12-29, Matthew 11:7-15

When Jerusalem finally fell to Babylon, it fell hard. The king’s sons were killed and his eyes were put out. Priests, councilors, officers, and random citizens were executed in a show of force and cruelty that ended in the exile of Judah. The Babylonians sacked the temple, looting everything down to the serving utensils and decorative bronze pomegranates.

No one could say they didn’t see it coming. From Israel’s first king Saul through her last king Zedekiah, nearly all of them betrayed the Lord and the people in significant ways. Time after time, the Lord allowed them to repent, and spared both king and kingdom. The Lord had no desire to see his people suffer, and was generous with forgiveness. But after more than twenty kings and nearly as many generations, the Lord’s warnings that nothing good would come from choosing to be led by kings were undeniable. Israel and then Judah fell to foreign invaders and for all intents and purposes ceased to be.

In time they would be restored, at least for a while. The period in between was one of grief not just for the Jewish people, but also for the Lord.

The Lord never delights in our suffering, but also doesn’t seem to stop us from bringing it upon ourselves. Our relationship with our creator is based on love, and love can never be forced. Is all our suffering a result of our own decisions? Certainly not. Many times it’s the fallout of other people’s decisions. Sometimes it’s unavoidable or unpredictable, like a disease or a disaster. But our stubbornness and hard hearts still cause us no end of grief. And at times it feels like the consequences of our actions return to dismantle us down to the smallest details of our lives.

During those times, wouldn’t we prefer a God who, satisfied that we’ve learned our lesson, quickly snatches us from spiritual exile and restores us to good fortune? But easy fixes aren’t love either. Love stands by to offer the appropriate support while we fix ourselves … and sometimes it has to wait a long time for us to figure out both what we need to fix and the will to do it. No matter how long it takes, God waits.

When we feel undone by life, let’s cling to the certainty that God does not leave us, but grieves with us until we find our way back to wholeness.

Comfort: God is with you even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Challenge: If what you’ve been doing isn’t working … do something else.

Prayer: Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.. (Psalm 118:9)

Discussion: When the people of Israel eventually returned to their homes, they had to rebuild from the ground up. Have you ever had to rebuild instead of fixing?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see…

/ JJS / 1 Comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 116; 147:12-20, Job 16:16-22, 17:1, 17:13-16, Acts 13:1-12, John 9:1-17

Every summer we take our nephews camping. The campground’s many roads loop back on one another, so there are multiple ways to get places. One afternoon the younger nephew insisted we were taking the long way back to camp and kept trying to pull me down another road. I pointed toward our site: “Look, Jack, our tent is right there.” He said: “I don’t see it.” We did this twice more until I looked down and saw he’d shut his eyes tight.

Sight and blindness are important metaphors in the Bible. In today’s passage from John, we encounter a blind man who prompts Jesus to break Mosaic law and perform a healing on the Sabbath – a reminder that faith binds us to mercy, not legalism. In Acts, Saul and Barnabas meet Bar-Jesus, a Jewish magician and false prophet in the city of Paphos. Saul condemns Bar-Jesus for “making crooked the straight paths of the Lord” and the Spirit strikes the magician temporarily blind. His refusal to see the truth – and his attempt to lead others down the wrong road – put him in a debilitated state. If this seems harsh, remember Saul himself was struck blind by the Spirit before he accepted Christ, so what seems like a curse may have been a cure.

We’re all blind to something, especially our own shortcomings. Like the disciples asking whose sin caused the man’s blindness – his own or his parents – we want to point fingers. Certainly neither the man nor his parents were without sin (who is?) but Jesus focused on how God could transform the present situation. Jesus used spit and dirt to begin the healing process, but the man had to walk himself to a pool to wash the mud off. When we want to make ourselves whole, we need to have faith God does not limit us to the darkness of the past, but guides us to a brighter future. We may have to get our hands dirty with therapy, soul-searching, and hard decisions, but as the old hymn promises, the lost will be found and the blind will see.

(for another take on today’s reading from John, see Spit, Mud, and Healing)

Comfort: God is waiting to make you whole.

Challenge: You’re going to have to do some of the work.

Prayer: God of healing, granter of mercies, I seek the wholeness you offer. Amen.

Discussion: The title of today’s post is from Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation. What are some things you’ve tried not to see?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!