The Redemption Project - Dust

Stars, as far as we know, all form the same way. In the gassy expanse of a nebula—itself a remnant of a dead star—atoms of hydrogen fall into each other's gravity and begin to orbit one another. Their shared mass creates a small well, which curves space and draws more atoms into a dance. As more join, the dance speeds up and, as it does, it generates heat.

Eventually enough atoms join this dance that things not only grow hot but crowded. Atoms start to disturb one another, nearly run into others. Eventually, the heat and the press of the crowd push two atoms together, and...something explosive happens.

As I write this our sun's atoms are continuing this dance, which began eons ago. Hydrogen atoms are combined to become helium, causing an incredible amount of energy to be released. Energy that is transmitted as heat and light that crosses ninety-three million miles to our soil and skin. And, it'll keep doing this for several million more years.

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day we start a new season by reminding ourselves and each other that we're human. Our short lives barely register against the long lifespan of our sun. And where it will leave behind a cloud of gas that can glow in brilliant colors, we will become dust, gray and dull.

This can be a depressing thought. I'm small and finite and weak. I don't shine like the sun. What little light I reflect can't even illuminate a small room. Stellar remnants fill light-years and their glow can be seen across the galaxy for millions of years. All signs I was here will, in a couple of generations, be gone. Except, of course, the dust that is caught in the wind to glow as motes in the sunlight.

Our sun's rays have been filled with such small motes since it was young. After its fiery birth there were lighter elements in the remaining gas. In the heat of our proto-galaxy, some of these bits of hydrogen and helium were forged into heavier ones like calcium and carbon. They, however, amounted to little more than dust in the orbiting cloud.

Yet, in the heat and pressure as eons passed, some of that dust began to clump together, growing larger, attracting more particles as it began to spin. And, over time, as the dust clung to each other, the pressure subsided, the great heat began to cool.

And the dust had come together to form a new, beautiful world.

The Redemption Project - Intercession

I'm guilty of supporting the side-show. While I have refused to follow the President on Twitter, I still click on the headlines. I still want to know what was said. I want to be appalled, to be exasperated by his words. In fact, if I honestly confess it, I'm a little disappointed if a day goes by and he doesn't say some outrageous thing.

Perhaps it's things I read this week, or just the strange movement of the Spirit, but I thought about the President this morning while reading Scripture. And not in a way I would have expected.

Isaiah writes of a servant who is despised and rejected. In verse twelve of chapter fifty-three we hear that the Servant is counted among the sinners, bears the errors of their rebellion against the Holy One. And, then, at the end of the verse, we're told this Servant intercedes for those same sinners.

The Servant describes the character of Jesus. He has every right to rebuke those around him who speak falsely and without love. He could vent about their tweets and speeches, condemning every detail. But he doesn't. Even dying, he prayed for their forgiveness and that they would receive a new and tender heart of love.

Jesus, unlike me, wouldn't hate-read. He wouldn't be opening his news app with a sick hope that the President had said something offensive. He wouldn't be wishing for some statement or policy about which to get angry.

He would probably do what I should do for Lent, fast from the news cycle. Maybe he'd ignore those statements that are the bread and butter of the media. Surely, he'd tell me that reading these things is no way to help bring about the redemption of Creation.

Or would he?

What if withdrawing isn't the answer? Jesus engaged the world head-on. He didn't avoid what was happening. He just reacted to it much differently than I do.

It might be something to keep reading, keep clicking. But, instead of reacting with the anger these statements are designed to provoke, I react differently. Instead of feeling offended and angered, I am moved to sorrow and, through that, to prayer. Rather than condemn the speaker, I ask for their healing, their wholeness. Instead of screaming "why would someone do that" I can pray, forgive them they don't know what they're doing.

Doing so might bring change. God has softened harder hearts. Where once harsh words were said, love will be spoken. All reason for outrage may cease and joy break forth like a flood. A new person may be born to live and move guided by the Spirit of grace. The world could be touched and healed.

And the President's heart may change as well.

The Redemption Project - Stones of Home

There's a video that's been making the rounds on the internet this week of Astronaut Christina Koch's homecoming, her true homecoming. In it, after nearly a year in space, she and LBD, her dog, see each other for the first time. It's a joy-filled video with LBD running in circles, Astronaut Koch falls to her knees and you hear her little dog, in barks, welcoming her home.

This video came at the end of a week I'd been thinking about home. I've prayed, this week, the words of Psalm 102. Intermingled with its personal lament, there's a longing for Jerusalem, devastated and far away after the Babylonian conquest. Your very stones, the poet says of their homeland, are precious. Imagine, even the rocks, those small pieces of earth that we kick aside as a nuisance on the road, have become cherished pieces of home.

Thinking about home always makes me think of the old saying I was brought up on: Heaven is our real home. This earth is just a temporary place for us. We are just strangers and aliens here.

Wiser minds than mine have written how incorrect this statement is. In fact, Heaven, according to Scripture, is the in-between place, the place we wait between our death and the Redemption of All Things. In Heaven, we're looking forward to coming back here. This is not a place we hope to escape but a place to which we will always long to return. In fact, in the time we and those who've gone before us wait for the moment when all is made new, we may find ourselves declaring, like the Psalmist, just how precious its stones are to us.

Perhaps I should also note that stones have also been a part of this week. The previous owners of our house filled the beds around our yards with rocks, and not the small decorative ones but fist-sized and colored brown and tan. Since the summer, I've been slowly replacing them with mulch. As we had a respite from rain last weekend, I was out bagging up these stones before dragging them to the curb. And, as I hoisted their weight over my shoulder, I'll admit I found nothing precious about them.

But as the week went on I got to thinking, what it would take for me to treat these rocks like precious jewels? If I were away for months, if we were evacuated and settled far from here, what would I feel when I returned? Would even the things I find less than beautiful transform into something I would fall to my knees and gather up in my hands?

And what of them? What might happen if even these mundane and annoying parts of this world—my home—were treated as if they were fragments from a holy place. Would they, inanimate and silent, react to me?

Would even the very stones begin to cry out to welcome me home?

The Redemption Project - Prayer

Can prayer change the world? change people? What happens if your prayer and someone else's prayer run contrary to one another? Do they cancel out, collide like positive and negative particles as they pass through the air?

Prayer was in the news this week. The Speaker of the House said she prays for the President. So do a lot of other people. Their desires, I imagine, differ. Same with the world around us. My prayers for our wounded world probably run counter to what someone else is praying. Does God weigh up these requests, seeing which one outnumbers the other and act accordingly? Or has the Holy One stepped back and is letting us figure it out?

Sometimes, I don't know if praying does anything. I do not question God's presence or if prayers are heard. I believe in both. I just find myself wondering what good they do. Do the words we say in whispers in our rooms have any impact on the world?

Perhaps it's simply a matter of scale. I continue to believe in what prayer can do, the effect it can have on a small scale. I've prayed for healing for those I love and seen recoveries (and sometimes not). I've asked for small things, insignificant in the grand scheme, to help point the way in big or troubling decisions, and I've received them. On a micro scale of person to person, I believe that the act of prayer does bring healing, wholeness, and peace.

Is it just in the wider world one prayer is just a drop in a dry lake? It lands, it wets the dirt, but it is not enough to fill the empty space, bring about visible change. In fact, it would take millions of prayers to fill the space to ankle-depth. And what of those who want the land to remain dry?

The questions lead me to ask, what is prayer? Is it a conversation with our dearest friend, to whom we pour out our deepest desires? Is it a method that can change the Divine Mind? Is it more for us than for God?

Yes, I think, to all. And, I believe, more. Perhaps, beyond all of this, it's contact with the One who is love. It is a means of expressing love, which pours more love into this world. And while that can sound like a hippie-happy philosophy, I am reminded that love is not a gentle wind or a softly burning candle but a fierce gale and a flame that cannot be quenched. And, with my whispered words, that wind and fire touches me, changes me, works to inhabit me.

And, then, I go and touch the world.

The Redemption Project - Sorrow

In a devotion this morning, I read about anger. The piece focused on the importance of feeling the emotion of anger, of not burying or avoiding it. And while I know the place the writer was coming from, it didn't seem to fit this present moment.

No one, anywhere, seems to have any issue expressing anger. The President is angry. Congress is angry. The news, left or right, is angry. The angry rants from others incites that same emotion in me. And while I'll admit some people are burying their emotion under loud voices, I'm not seeing anyone who's having an issue holding back on confessing and expressing anger.

There is a place for it, certainly. Injustice, greed, hatred all do and should give rise to feelings of anger, righteous anger, within us. These things are evidence of a world as it should not be. They are evidence of a realm where we put ourselves before one another. These things demand our voices, spurred by anger.

But something's not working. As noted, everyone's angry, top-down. And nothing's changing. In fact, rather than change for the good, rage continues to grow. Everyone appears to find yet another reason not to listen to one another. We come up with more and more extreme means to get our point across. Maybe it's time for something new.

In the Gospels, Jesus looks toward Jerusalem and gives voice to a lament. O Jerusalem, how I've longed, he says, to gather you as a mother gathers her young. His words are a reaction. But they are not spoken in anger. No, his words come from sorrow, a feeling of sadness tied to regret.

Regret can get a bad rap as it's often associated with a feeling tied to our own actions. But, at heart, it's a feeling born out of disappointment. So, sorrow is sadness that comes from disappointment. It is not the simple disappointment of missing out on something, but an emotion that follows moments when we see someone, including ourselves, choose hate over love, ignorance over wisdom.

It's not as empowering an emotion as anger, not initially. The white-hot fire of anger spurs us to speak, to yell, to act. Sorrow, however, is more akin to grief, which weakens us as it reminds us of how little control we have over the world.

But sorrow, like grief, does that amazing thing that anger cannot. While weakness seems the opposite of what we need, it opens that door to greater strength. It reminds us that changing, redeeming the world is not all on us, as individuals. And in remembering, we find a new sort of strength, one more powerful than anger's fire that does not consume us in its flame.

And from its darkness, light begins to dawn.