Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I've had house to myself this week since my wife had to travel because of work And while there's a bit of pleasure in being at home alone, mostly I spent the time counting the hours until her plane landed.


Like many married people, we've had our fair share of time apart. Between work trips and the in-between times moving between states, there have been quite a few nights when we each dined alone and spoke only through emails and phone calls.


I'm not a big fan of the phone as my beloved will tell you. I miss something, particularly with my wife, when I can't see the person with whom I'm talking. And I tend not to talk as much or for as long. So what would usually be an evening spent catching up on our lives and our day becomes a half-hour or so of hitting the high points before we say goodnight.


It's difficult to really tend a relationship when you can't see the other person. At least, it is for me. My feelings don't change. The moments spent talking with the one I love are no less precious on the phone than in person. But it's much less rare that I feel that connection that I often feel when the two of us are together. In fact, in all honesty, I sometimes find my mind wandering much easier when I don't have someone upon which to focus my attention.


This is perhaps the problem I've had with God for years. As much as I want to sit and talk with Christ, as much as I want to share my thoughts, my day, my fears, and my dreams I far too often find my mind wandering. Too easily I drift from my focus to thinking about the leaky sink or simply becoming absorbed in my own thoughts. And when I do talk, those conversations are often far too brief in comparison with the rest of my day. Especially considering this is someone I dearly love and that for whom my heart longs.


My wife observed, a week or two ago, that God is the only person she is in relationship with whom she's never seen. There is good spirituality in the reminder that we see the Presence all around us—in nature, in the animals who share our lives, and in one another. However, this thinking does not make for great relationships. While I may look about the house and see many reminders and perhaps even catch glimpses of my love, it's nowhere near the same as actually seeing her.


So each night, as I hung up the phone, I looked forward to the day when our time apart was over and I was again truly with the one I love. Each night drew me closer to the moment I could see her again. And until the time apart ended, I was filled with longing.


Perhaps it is a feeling similar to that described by the Psalmist: "like a deer longs for streams of water." Yes, I long to see the One I love.


My dear One whom I long for, help me to see glimpses and reminders of you and draw closer to you until we are together.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 8:20


Jeremiah's words "Harvest is past, summer ended" have me thinking less about what is said in that book and more about the world around me this week. For us, summer is not quite ended, but autumn draws near with nights longer than days and turning leaves, which signal that the time for reaping will soon end.


There is, the author of Ecclesiastes tells us, a time for everything. In my own life, it is a time for harvest. Like the farmers that are our neighbors, I feel like I've done my own work of preparation, planting, and tending during the long growing season. And while I am in no way close to the autumn of life, I am at a point where I'm looking for something on the stalks out in the yard.


However, while the summer has nearly ended and the time of harvest is upon us, I can find no evidence of my hard work. There are pieces scattered about that testify to my toil, but the field I've sweated and worked in these many long months (truly, years) looks like it has never been tilled.


Was all that hard work for nothing? Were all those hours, all the sweat spilled useless?


If I continue with the agricultural metaphor, I suppose I could say that I'm wondering if I planted in the right ground. I wonder if I chose the right crop for the soil. I wonder, even, if I had any business attempting any type of growth.


Are you, like me, looking for harvest? Has summer ended and you find that there is nothing in this season of your life to show for your long days of work? Perhaps you've networked, and interviewed at dozens of places but are still out of work. Maybe you have a job, but have worked long hours for a promotion that was given to someone else. Perhaps you've finished a degree, but you find yourself, day after day, at a job that bears no relation to what you studied. Or maybe you've done your best and given all you had only to find yourself impacted in the latest round of layoffs.


How do we hold on to hope of harvest when the wind is beginning to strip leaves from the trees and there seems to be nothing out in the garden that hasn't been burned up by summer's heat? I don't know if there is any easy answer to that. It can feel in these times that the darkness of despair has won, and we are alone in an empty field.


But I try and remember that I am not alone. There are others who have found that summer is past. And even if there were not, the Presence of Love does not abandon us. Even if Christ seems to have no answers for my "whys" uttered in the chilling breeze, I must remember that I am not left to stand alone in it.


And, I suppose, just as Light came in the darkness of the year, there can be hope for harvest, even when it has passed.


God of every season, give us hope that what is sowed in love is never in vain.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 14


"There's no God." According to our Psalmist, only a fool would say such a thing. I suppose, then, I would be among the fools of this world. And, to be honest, I don't know if that's the most foolish answer to the evil that runs rampant in this world.


That's not a typical devotion-style statement, I suppose. I should probably be writing that I agree with the Psalmist and those nonbelievers out there are ignorant. How could anyone (anyone!) ever say that there is no loving God with, as the old song says, the whole world in hand? Well, honestly, it's not that hard.


The ten-dollar word for trying to reconcile an evil world with a good God is theodicy. It's a fancy way of saying that we have no idea why people fly planes into towers, why politicians start wars, or why the forces of nature can shatter dreams in the course of a few hours. But this doesn't mean people don't keep trying to explain it. And one very real explanation for it, according to many (and at one time myself) is, as the Hebrew literally says, "No God."


You can imagine that I don't take too kindly to being called a fool. Personally, I put a great deal of thought into my beliefs even during my atheist days when I determined that I didn't believe in anything. Saying that my conclusions were foolish is a bit condescending. In fact, I'm tempted to tell the Psalmist what lake into which he should take a plunge.


But then I began to look at the word we so often render as "fool."


For us, a foolish person is one who is someone who doesn't put a lot of thought into what they're doing. Perhaps they're ignorant. Perhaps they're running off half-cocked. Whatever, they're someone whose word shouldn't carry a whole lot of weight.


But the word we have here is not about ignorance or bad conclusions, but about worth. Particularly, it's a word that relates to a person's worth to those around them. It would, for us, be closer to the meaning if we were to say that the one who has nothing to offer others says, "No God."


This, of course, has an entirely different meaning for me. No longer is the Psalmist questioning my reasoning, but is instead letting me know that my well-formed thesis isn't doing anyone any good at all. In fact, while I think it's an explanation for the pain and suffering in this world, it's as worthless to the hurting as…well as water to those who are drowning.


What does this have to do with our daily life? Maybe you've never questioned God's existence. Or maybe you've never worried about why bad things happen in the world. But many of us have been tempted to explain those moments when the idea of a world "God so loved" seems at odds with the surrounding reality. And in those times the Psalmist comes to us again, reminding us how worthless such explanations are to those in pain.


God of every moment, help me when confronted by suffering in life to look for where you are rather than where you weren't.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 139


Psalm 139, like many within that ancient songbook, has an introduction. The Hebrew version of this introduction says something to the effect that this song is "to the leader, of David." However, in the Greek version (called the Septuagint), the introduction tells us that this Psalm is "for the end."


For the end? What does that mean? The end of what? Most likely, since these songs were meant for the worshipping community, it was meant for the end of worship. But I think it would work just as well at the end of a day. It's just the kind of prayer you could say before going to bed. Though, for me, it doesn't seem, at first glance, to be the most peaceful thing to meditate upon right before falling asleep.


"You searched me and you will know me." Yes, Lord, you knew when I sit and stood today. Why, you even knew not only every word on my tongue this day, but everything I didn't tell a soul. Ah, yes, how wonderful, too wonderful indeed.


Are you kidding? There's nothing wonderful about that. In fact, it's downright terrifying. God knows. God knows not just all the bad things I said about other drivers in the privacy of my car but also the petty jealousies that have gripped my heart throughout the day. No I don't think "wonderful" is the word I'd use here. And despite the way this Psalm is often read aloud, I don't think the Psalmist initially thought this was something to get excited about.


The lectionary cuts out a large part of the psalm that, I think, is informative about what the writer was thinking. Right after verse six there are questions about where one can hide from the presence of God. Can I hide in heaven? No, you're there. If I could fly to the morning I would find you there as well. For our Psalmist, like me, this reality makes him want to run and hide.


It is not the most relaxing of activities to sit down at the end of the day and admit that all those things that I hold secret from the world and, to be honest, that I try to keep secret from myself are not unknown and unnoticed. Yet, as uncomfortable as that knowledge is, I find that there is some strange comfort in it. Perhaps it's a comfort that the Psalmist found—that this God who knows us is also the One who made even the most invisible parts of our being. In this sense, there's a peace in the knowledge that God knows how I'm put together and, somehow, understands a little of why I am the way I am, even when I don't.


Or, maybe, it's the knowledge that God already knows how awful I am. Unlike the rest of the world, I never have to wonder what God will think if ever all those ugly thoughts, those inconsistencies, the selfishness was uncovered. It already has been uncovered. And, somehow, I'm still loved.


Gracious Creator, thank you for loving me because of who I am and not in spite of it.