Why Are You So Afraid?
Friday before Christmas, a wicked winter storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands and trees were tossed like toothpicks in my hometown. It was frightening, to say the least, and some residents are still in the dark and cold. Fear comes in all varieties: fear of the storm, of death, of severe diagnosis, of poverty, of losing one’s job, and the list goes on.
Can These Bones Live?
I’ve had my share of “bad news.” I know you have too if you have lived long enough. I read somewhere that grief feels a lot like fear, and I admit this has been my experience. The inevitable, the avoid-at-all-costs thing that rears its ugly head and becomes a reality sometimes hits hard and fast, sometimes grows heavier with each passing day. When the future looms dark and petrifying, I want to deny, deflect and pretend.
Where Are You?
January 2023… as the New Year dawns, I peer down the road brimming with uncertainties and possibilities and wonder, what will this year bring? As I reflect back on 2022, I ponder the past and wonder, what lingers? Ann Voskamp’s recent book, The Waymaker inspires me. Early on, she includes a reminder of ‘history’s first good question’ posed by God after the Fall.
Like Dynamite
I’ve been pondering this idea that the smile of Christ doesn’t just light up dark places, but is powerful, cutting through stormy skies with flashes of brilliance that both dazzle and intimidate. It is not the usual image I get when I think of Jesus smiling at me. That picture is more good-natured, tender, and often twinkly. But this other image…it’s a bit unnerving.
Thin Like Paper
It is God’s smile focused on us that sets free the mystery of God with us. God in us. God through us. Just like Mary, we wonder, how this can possibly be? After all, we’re only….
The thin-ness of the flesh. Psalm 103 compares us to dust; grass that withers and flowers whose heads fall off. I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel like my head is going to come off some days. Life has a way of getting big and complicated, and sometimes I feel down to my very essence that I am not enough for it. Dust is a good metaphor. Poof, and it’s gone.
Sing the Song!
Jesus always invites us to come as we are to him. When we do, His smile, His loving gaze reaches in and touches our forgotten places, fearful places, tender places. And in that moment a song that we have known since before we were born is set free. It is the song of mystery, first of a God who inhabits flesh as a baby, and then, who inhabits us. “The first happened so the second could happen, but the second could not happen without the first.” (Evelyn Underhill)
