What sustains you when so much of The Old Dream grows moss? On our overnight trip yesterday & today we drove through attractive towns of mid-America apparently populated by comfortable citizens who owned and maintained and shopped in mid-America stores. We ate too well with other seniors who didn’t need to consume that much. The crops of wheat and corn are prospering, this year… We also drove down some one-way courts where houses were shabby, with kids playing on the street since they had no yards. Rusty roofs abounded, as did derelict porches and rutty & muddy driveways… I’ve trained myself to say, “Yeah, that’s how it is.” But thorns of need-amidst-plenty still prick at my soul.
Sunday’s scriptures contain A Word I/We Need to Hear. In I Kings we’re told of young Solomon surprisingly ascending the throne, and honestly telling God that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “I do not know how to go out or come in.” (3:7) He asks The Lord for discernment between righteousness and evil, to find the redeemable within the tawdry. “Good call,” says the Lord. “It’s done!”
The Eighth Chapter of Romans concludes with the powerful words which sustain ME when I ask if God’s on vacation: “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!” (38-39) At my daily funeral service for humanity, this phrase rushes at me and tells me that a wobbly Creation hasn’t yet been consigned to the rubbish…
What to do with Jesus’ parables? (Matthew 13) If there’s a common thread, it’s that of anticipation, of waiting. The mustard seed needs time to mature into a sheltering tree; we wait. The yeast is mixed with flour, but the loaf continues to rise; we wait. The trespasser who stumbles upon hidden treasure has to wait through legal processes. The pearl-merchant has to liquidate his stock to raise the cash he needs; he also waits. What’s good to hear and to tell is that seeds and yeast DO hold life, that there IS treasure, that there IS the pearl of my dreams!
I’ve gotta lighten up and stop telling God how to run the world. But how to move past “weak resignation to the evils we deplore”? Become blind of eye and hard of heart? No. But if I really make Paul’s conviction my own, I can see this as a promise to humanity…and maybe cast my meager energy into announcing this to the Poor…
God Bless Us! Every One… Horace Brown King
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