The Dance.

A couple weeks back my pastor began Sunday morning with a Psalm, as he does every Sunday. I sat quietly and listened to the words. As the reading concluded, I mentally checked out of our small fellowship, everything that would follow Psalm 113. The few words with which it ended were bursting with promises of God's character and presence, and yet I had not so much been moved to worship or thanksgiving, but to questions...

“He raises the poor from the dust...”
“Lifts the needy from the ashes...”
“Seats them with princes...”

A reading like this usually would have and has prompted a good deal of comfort and hope in this past year. The Old Testament on into the new is full of such language, of the God who defends the fatherless, the widow and orphan. For some time now, Jesus' inauguration speech in the Nazarene synagogue, reiterating Isaiah's Jubilee proclamation as his Kingdom agenda, has been music to my ears. But currently I find myself trying to figure out how that music fits with the rest this city's soundtrack. In the context of simply hearing or reading, I can and have celebrated such passages. But living here, amidst story after story of seemingly forsaken life, I'm left holding onto God's character more so than confidently speaking of it. The last few months have either led me to the feet of the crucified God or significantly far from him. Again and again I find myself leaning entirely on the promises, the restorative language, my hope in the Creator's love for the created. Much of this hope has come from reading beautiful words proclaimed and prophesied, spoken by the likes of Isaiah. There is not a more life giving meditation than words like those found at the end of Isaiah 55:

“As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all of the trees will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of the briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed...”

This Word did become flesh, a moment in history when God was no doubt with us. I celebrate that and yet still find difficulty in conceiving God here and now. To the thin and frail man sleeping on the sidewalk, whose only companions are the flies gathering on his face and blanket, or to the young girl lifting her skirt to pay off a debt that she never chose for herself, what word can be confidently sown? These are the lives and stories which have humbled my thoughts and opinions this year, to consider life that has every reason to question the goodness and love of God. In such thought processes, Isaiah's words remind and sustain me, as well as force me to reflect on what I can't see or have yet to see, to try and live in prayer and hope at the places where this world is in pain. Without such meditation, I would have long ago lost sight of what might and can be.

My first year in this city has felt much like a balancing act. In one sense I am to believe that with or without his people, God can and will accomplish whatever he desires. I do. But there are places and circumstances in this world which scream responsibility, situations that force me to ask what Jesus really handed his disciples as he left to go to the Father. I recently heard someone go as far as to say, in his reflections on the promises found in scripture, that either God is a liar or we are not doing our part. Many would say it's much more complicated than that. At the least, I feel it is a statement worth pondering, more so now than ever before.

In my many difficult doses of reality this year, it has appeared to me that life sometimes seems our best attempts at “sharing and bearing the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may be brought to bear healingly upon it,” as one theologian so eloquently put it. But most days I feel more like a spectator than someone sharing or bearing. One thing I am sure of though, as I reflect on Paul's letter to the Romans, is that there is a Spirit within me groaning for liberation, for change. And although that Spirit seems to blow here and there most days, it is very much alive. This is not to say I'm always chasing it around. But life here is something of a dance. And anyone who knows me well enough can vouch for me when I say that dancing is something I've never been good at.