Friday, October 30, 2009

Dear God,

I continue to do a virtual study on the lectionary readings with my covenant group. I am being challenged daily by my learnings. Because you are the author of these teaching moments, I am sending to you what I wrote them.

Isaiah 25:6-9

I have tasted this feast of God in my own darkness. A moment of light, a renewed hope, peace in the midst of chaos, joy in sorrow have all served as feasts in the midst of difficulties. Those feasts feed me when I am hungry for whatever I lack. Only God has the power to truly feed us in our pain and suffering. What else can? Only God can wipe away constant tears from losses. Perhaps the greatest challenge in humanity's life is the ability to discover a feast when no food is available. God's feast can get us through the next moment, the next minute, hour and day. While I imagine a greater day beyond this earthly life, I believe we need to find manna from heaven when we can't find the "food" we are seeking.

Psalm 24

As I continue to look at the "underworld", the invisible beyond the visible perhaps where God is most present, I realize there are some situations in the temporary moment that are insolvable. Starving people need food. Yet often their own governments do not care. The world may be sending money to feed them, yet if their own leaders do not feed them with these gifts, they will have nothing to eat. Where is God in this? Each person on the face of this lonely earth needs something. When there is no food to eat, when there is no love or help or goodness or beauty, where can we turn in our want? It seems that God can feed us even down to our death.

A member of my former church is a refuge from Liberia. She lived in refugee camps. She was standing next to her uncle when he was shot and killed by rebels. When she bent to help him, they threatened to kill her too. She had to keep walking. When her 18 month old son died in her arms because there was no medicine to take care of a simple illness, she desperately needed "food" and God gave it to her. She has a thousand stories of food in the desert wasteland of her own life.

There is a great deal of injustice the world over. Like Jesus said, "the poor will be with us always." Poor can mean different things. Yes, I too have traveled to Palestinian refuge camps. I have listened to their stories. I have stood in the middle of Egypt's garbage city where three generations of undesirables have given birth. Nothing is afforded them. Yet I have heard stories where they have found "food". I have been to Ghana and heard stories of hunger, yet I have heard stories of "feasts" of God coming to them. I witnessed "food" in Russia in 1988 among believers who have little to nothing. What a joy to celebrate 1000 years of Christianity with people who took faith seriously, who felt that faith was food.

In our nonsensical world where we worry about perfectly stupid things, perhaps we need to spend more time in the underworld in order to understand our own needs and wants and our responsibilities to our neighbor. My heart is purified when I realize that God is the only one that can truly clean a heart. How many days is my heart really pure, my hands really clean? I can stand a whole day washing both and what do I end up with? Dirty hands and an impure heart. Why? Because I generally forget the first commandment to love the Lord my God with all my being and I don't care for my neighbor as I am called. How many people could I feed if I sold my house and gave the money to the poor?

Like my friends, I too ascend the hill of the Lord where I find God waiting to care for me. God gives me much more than I am worth. I am filled to overflowing just at the sweet touch of his hand. It's true gates can lift their heads, doors can be opened simply because God has walked by. I am the answer to my brother or sister's dilemma when they are hungry. I have the means when I really look at myself. Perhaps instead of "feeding" myself full of the feast, I need to go out and rally my neighbors telling them where the feast is, showing them the way to God after I have fed them a good meal.

Revelation 21:1-6a

In my suffering I need to read this. In fact I should read this each morning before I rise. This one passage is enough to give a hungry person food, a hopeless person hope, a lost person found, a despairing person faith. If I read this each morning I could walk in faith believing that even if I am starving of whatever, God will make me new. God will care for me. The world is not perfect; never will it be. And God will pretty much never work in our desired timeline. Death does come to all of us. No way to get around it. Perhaps our answers, our solutions to life problems will not come in this lifetime.

In my visible world I have difficulties to which I may not know an answer. But when I go underground and wander the world of the invisible, I am able to witness what I could not see on the surface. This newness of life exists there. Maybe that's why so many get ticked with God because all they/we can see is what we see. We judge that there is no more. The new waits for me and you and our neighbors. In the meantime the old lingers and I can help my neighbor by feeding, wiping tears, giving joy and hope.

John 11:32-44

How many places am I bound? My friends bound? My neighbors bound? Isn't this what it means to love God with all of me and my neighbor as myself? Because I am bound to God, I need to help in the unbinding of others. Doesn't Cindy do that at the hospital? Doesn't Susan do that in her denomination and through counselling? Doesn't Jan do that with all her churches and pastors? Doesn't Bill do that at Greenwood? Don't we do it in our families and with our friends? You have unbound me and I trust I have aided in your unbinding.

Death is always a breath away in some part of life. It lurks at every corner. I can succumb to death several times a day when I refuse to take God's hand or feed myself with heaven's manna.

I think Jesus' tears are all about us not getting it. For the most part we don't get it. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are treated as if they have come to do what I want or need. They are just personal gods intended to meet my needs, desires and wants. When do we in our light or our darkness exist to praise God with our whole self without asking for something? If we accepted the fact that we were made for God rather than God made for us, wouldn't we live differently? Does God care about every concern we have? Absolutely. But when we start operating as persons who live for God rather than God living for us, perhaps our world will be new, our people will be fed, injustice would stop, people would stop oppressing one another, good would defeat evil, light would live forever. Sounds like eternity, doesn't it?

Our readings force me to look deeper, dig down further and further. I am always being called to learn something new, accept something more bold, to act more in faith and less out of fear and to love those around me. This is a power-full exercise. Thanks to all of you.

Thank you for these learnings, Gracious God.

Love, Andrea