Help Is On the Way!

The Bride’s grandma was trying to put on a game face, after she slipped and fell at the reception.  But several of us saw the pain, and we called 911.  I went out front to direct the paramedics — when would they ever get here? — and strained my ears in hope.  Finally, finally, there came a faint siren noise above the rest of the traffic.   I returned to the party, announcing that “help is on the way!”  Scripture expressions for this Sunday are faint noises of hope above the traffic and drunken carelessness of our clueless world.

“The days are surely coming….”  writes Jeremiah to the topsy-turvy shell which was once Israel. (31:27-34) You may think that the old stories are lost forever, that  traditional values are discarded, that the familiar homestead has been developed past recognition.  You may even want to hole up in your memories and reject today’s life.   But…says God through Jeremiah, ” I will watch over them to build and to plant.”   We can’t go back (nor should we, McFly), but we can keep listening for music of a New Covenant which God will make, writing it upon our hearts…

Paul writes to Timothy “in view of [Jesus] appearing and his kingdom.” (II Timothy 4:1)  You can really see that, Paul, from your house-arrest at Rome?   With the desperation of Empire enacted so brutally around you?   On the door-step of the Dark Ages when life is so cheap?  How audacious can it be to tell your friends to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”?  Timothy is to wait in hope, with “the utmost patience”.

Luke says that Jesus’ parable is about our need to pray without losing heart.   We call it the “parable of the Unjust Judge” (Luke 18:1-8), but it should be known as the Parable of the Hopeful Widow.  This isn’t really an analogy, ‘cept for comparing God’s goodness with the disregard of the evil judge.   If there’s any identification of the characters, it’s for us to emulate the widow, one of the “little people” whose only power is in her hope that righteousness will prevail , even within the oppressing dark.  And she won!   For one brief, shining moment….Jeremiah was right!   O frabjous day!  Calloo!   Callay!

The moments don’t come often, do they?  But we gather for worship, for study, for pot-luck yearning to hear the stories again!  There may be no others in the entire universe except us who can stand on the lawn away from the din and hear the far-off notes of hope!  Sometimes even I can hear the sweetness, away from the cursing and the enmity and the sneering,  Have we not seen?  Have we not heard?  Help is on the way!

God Bless Us, Every One                       H   B   King