Undoing Exile... Dare We Pray?

Micah 4:6-7, “’In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will gather the lame; I will assemble the exiles and those I have brought to grief.  I will make the lame my remnant, those driven away a strong nation” (NIV).

Again, from the book:  Illuminate, An Advent Experience, this is what I read, this morning: “Jesus teaches the importance of prayer in the midst of our brokenness… We are invited to hope in God and continue to pray with complete trust that God will transform us and our relationships” (Sheneman, 19).

Broken relationships are difficult, perhaps especially so during the holidays.  While I don’t think it would be responsible to equate the very real, physical exile of whole people groups from their native homes with the exile we feel in our hearts, caused by broken relationship; I do think there are some parallels we might draw, regarding our interaction with others.  In every way, when we have the opportunity and ability to restore right relationships, we should do so.

I fully recognize wide scale, systemic exile might be beyond the scope of what most of us can hope to repair.  We could, however, begin with our own families and then allow the effects to spread to our neighbors… our communities… strangers…  Because, let’s be real, brokenness can be found everywhere.

There are some key things that should be noted:

Prayer is messy.  It’s not a magical wish list that we hope might somehow be delivered to us, wrapped in shiny paper, topped with a beautiful bow.  That’s the other Christmas story.  Prayer most often incites transformation, and that transformation begins with us!  So if you’re going to pray, you might want to consider whether or not you actually want to change.  That’s the first part.

But I’m also looking at this Scripture and thinking about the odd language used… the idea that God brought people to grief and is now gathering them in.  If I’m honest, I don’t know exactly where to go with this, but I do know that I have, at least at times, brought people to grief, and the thought of humbling myself in order to now assemble them is overwhelming!  How might I do this?  How might we do this (goodness, it’s always easier in community)?  Who are the people I/we have exiled, and how can I/we now make it right?  These inquiries require pondering, because I do not know the answers!

Dare we pray?  I feel like it might be dangerous…  (#ButLessFearAndAllThat)

L.

Longing for Peace, with a Sword in Hand

It’s the first day of the first week after the first Sunday of the Advent season.  I fully understand that this should be about hope, and here I am thinking about peace.  Stay with me…

In the book, Illuminate, An Advent Experience, this is what I read, this morning: “Hope is an odd thing to understand.  We typically think of hope as a good thing.  Yet hope is rarely found in places where good things happen regularly.  Rather, hope is found in places where bad things happen, such as when we experience hurt and loss.  So if you meet people who are hopeful, they can usually tell you stories of pain or suffering” (Sheneman, 16).

The Psalmist implores:

“How long, Lord… may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.  Help us, God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake” (Psalm 79:5, 8-9, NIV).

We’ve been watching and waiting for 24 hours, and we’re already desperate.  It’s interesting that the next words we read in this text include an inquiry about how God might destroy our enemies in order to bring peace to us in the way we expect and desire peace to come.  Does this even make sense?  The prophet Micah says no:

“Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken. All the nations may walk in the name of their gods, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever” (Micah 4:3-5, NIV).

We don’t have to fight.  No one has to be destroyed.  It seems that there might be enough space for all of humanity, if we would just go out and find our own tree…  Hope and peace, intricately tied together, are not about conquering our enemies but rather about making room for them. 

In all of this, I have been thinking about what it is to actually suffer, as well.  I have been thinking about what it is to be in a place where hope is found precisely because the suffering is so great.  And I’m not sure we (you… I… whoever) grasp what this really means.  If we’re coming at it from any kind of privilege; I’m not sure we can.  That is not to dismiss any real suffering and tragedy that happens in our lives, but we have to make a distinction between pain and offense.  If, at any point, our response is, “I’m offended, so I am suffering;” we’ve got it wrong.  And there is no time during the church year that I see offense more prominently than during Advent.

I recently ran across a quote that went something like this: “Rather than putting Christ back in Christmas, I would settle for putting Christ back in Christian.”

Oh… 

And so I’m pondering what that means, today, as I think about ways in which I might usher in hope and peace to people who are hurting in tangible ways that extend far beyond sterilized offenses that only affect values that should be changed, anyway.

L.

It Just Keeps Coming

Lament.  Again.  There’s something here that we need to keep working out… something here that I need to keep working out…  I think it’s the part where sadness turns to trust in a God who covenants with us.  Lament is not just the complaining…

I want to include two of the daily office passages, in their entirety, to highlight this.  They are short.

Psalm 13:

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me” (NIV).

Micah 7:18-20:

"Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. You will be faithful to Jacob, and show love to Abraham as you pledged on oath to our ancestors in days long ago” (NIV).

I am incredibly good at sitting with sadness.  I think this is a huge part of what makes me who I am and also what makes me accessible to other people.  In a world (and in a church) where the vast majority expect “shiny, happy people holding hands” (lyrically beautiful, but practically shallow); we need others who are willing to dwell in the dark nights, drenched by torrential rains, with the hope that unfailing love reaches us, even there.

Disney’s “Inside Out” does such a masterful, magical job of visually expressing the need for both joy and sadness in our lives, intermingled, because we are, after all, whole people—not compartmentalized, but in need of holistic emotions… relationships… theology… everything…

When we allow ourselves to lament, yes, sadness touches our lives and our memories.  But it makes for something better, because it makes for something real… something we can actually hold onto.

L.