Faith

Become the Change

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John 1: 1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Light has come!  The Dawn is here! 

God created Light. 

And Light pushed the darkness into the shadows.

Light came and the world looked different, illuminated for the first time.

Light invited us to journey in a different way, to walk with Light.

But we wandered in the darkness, often mistaking shadows for Light.

The darkness sometimes made us afraid so we befriended darkness.

And then darkness taught us that we could see more clearly with Light.

So there, there in the darkness, we began to find Light.

Light began to flicker and shimmer over the waters and the earth and filled our space.

Light was like nothing we had ever known.

Light surrounded us and invited us into itself.

But we held back in the darkness, holding the Light at bay.

So, Light continued to shine into everything, even the dark and jagged corners of our world.

When we were lost, Light looked for us and we were found.

When we were grieving, Light held our hand.

When we were more comfortable in the darkness, Light waited patiently and beckoned us toward itself.

And when we could not find the Light, Light showed us our strength and our faith.

And then, undeterred, Light came, tiptoeing into our world, into even the darkness, without welcome or accolade.

And Light was laid aside.

So, quietly, oh so quietly, Light began to dance, filling the room, filling the world, filling us with Light.

Those who knew darkness suddenly knew Light.

Those who relied on shadows saw the way Light moves through them.

Light played.  Light danced. Light shimmered into the shadows of the world.

And Light invited us to join, to play, to dance, to shimmer.

And then we became part of the Light.

And even the darkness was filled with Light.

Light has dawned.  And Light asks us to dance—even in our darkness.  And we find that we are full of Light. 

The Light has come!  The Dawn is here! Go and be Light!  Merry Christmas! (SW 2021)

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the Kings and Princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The Work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To teach the nations,

To bring Christ to all,

To make music in the heart. (Howard Thurman)

Thank you so much for joining me in this series! I know the world hasn’t dramatically changed while we’ve been reading and thinking and commenting. But I think it’s changed a little. Thank you! Keep waiting on the world to change…and working on it too!

All the Presents have been opened
I’ve been up since early dawn
Sharing calls with friends and family
Dear old Santa’s come and gone

As we gather around the table
Holding hands we bow our heads
I thank the Lord for all of you
And this is what I said

I pray for peace to shine on a world that’s torn apart
I pray for faith to comfort and heal on troubled heart
For hope to restore our spirits, when the hopeless lose their way
May His everlasting Love surround us
This is what I pray

As we celebrate thе season and all the love that wе embrace
I’ll make sure to count my blessings when I see my children’s face
When I think about this Christmas right before I fall asleep
There’s still one thing I’ve to do to make this day complete

I pray for peace to shine on a world that’s torn apart
I pray for faith to comfort and heal on troubled heart
For hope to restore our spirits, when the hopeless lose their way
May His everlasting Love surround us
This is what I pray

I pray for peace to shine on a world that’s torn apart
I pray for faith to comfort and heal on troubled heart
For hope to restore our spirits, when the hopeless lose their way
May His everlasting Love surround us
This is what I pray

May His everlasting Love surround us
This is what I pray

Merry Christmas!

Shelli

Ambiguity

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Isaiah 7: 10-17

10Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, 11Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. 12But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. 13Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? 14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. 15He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

17The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria.”

During each season of Advent, we read texts that get louder and louder with prophetic messages of what is to come.  This is the thing of which Christmas’s are made.  And now we read of the signs and wonders that were shown to the House of David.  “Here, listen people, there is a young woman with child.  She shall bear a son and the world will change.”  That’s essentially what it says.  But wait a minute!  We always read this as a prophetic sign of what will come, a prophet’s vision of the coming of Christ, Immanuel.  But, read it again.  This is in the present tense.  The young woman IS with child.  (as in already) So, which is it?  Is it a child born immediately after this writing or are we talking about the birth of Jesus?  After all, the writer known as Matthew depicted it differently.  Is it then or is it later?  Yes.  Really, does it really matter.  Because it’s all of the above.

The sign is a child.  The child’s name, Immanuel (or “God with us”) reinforces the divine promise to deliver the people from sure demise.  The child is born of a young woman, the Hebrew “almah”, which means a young woman of marriageable age.  Many scholars think that the young woman may have been Ahaz’s wife and her son the future king Hezekiah. If the author had wanted to depict the woman as a virgin, the word “betulah” would have been used.  But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word was translated as “parthenos” or “virgin”.  So the writer of The Gospel According to Matthew understood the verse as a prediction of the birth of Jesus.  And then all those translators that came after that capitalized on that notion, perhaps in an effort to explain the unexplainable, to rid the text of the ambiguities that were probably meant to be there in the first place.

So, which is it?  Is it a virgin or a young woman?  Is it talking about Hezekiah or Jesus?  Is it what the writer known as Isaiah probably wrote or what the writer known as Matthew assumed or what the later redactors translated?  Yes.  All of the above.  The text and, indeed, the whole Bible is ambiguous at best.  Who are we kidding?  Faith is ambiguous.  Faith is everything.  I mean, maybe the ambiguity was actually a sign of what was coming.  Faith encompasses surety and doubt, light and darkness, life and death.  I don’t really get wrapped up in what “really” happened.  It doesn’t bother me if this is actually talking about Hezekiah.  But it was part of the Matthean writer’s tradition.  It meant something to him.  Somewhere in the words, in the text of his faith, he saw God.  He felt God.  To him, it means Immanuel.  And what better way to depict the first century nativity story that we love?  The coming of God WAS foretold–over and over and over again–through sacred stories told and shared by a waiting people.  It continues to be told, the story of God who breathed Creation into being, who entered the very Creation that held the God-breath, and who comes into each of our lives toward the glorious fulfillment of all that was meant to be.

Signs…are we missing them?  Are we looking for some that aren’t there or dismissing some that are perhaps too obvious to us.  I don’t think that God ever intended to lay it all out for us like some sort of lesson for us to memorize.  God doesn’t call us to have it all figured out but rather to live it, to open our eyes to all the sign and wonders of the world, to all the ways that God walks with us, to all the ways that God calls us to follow, to become.  All of the above, the obvious and the ambiguous, are part of the Truth that God reveals (whether or not our human minds can fathom it as “true”).  We are about to begin our journey to Bethlehem.  It is a road that is filled with ambiguities–loss and finding, sorrow and joy, fear and assurance, doubts and fears, a manger and a cross.  But along the way are signs of the God who is always with us, Immanuel, who carries us from moment to moment and from eon to eon with the promise of new life.  Let us go and see this thing that the Lord has made known–you know, all of the above.  It is this for which we were made.

Yes, we’re waiting on the world to change.  Are there signs?  Are we missing them?  Are we not paying attention?  Perhaps we think we have everything so figured out that we’re not open to what is.  Signs are not always overly obvious.  They are not always accompanied by flashing lights and sirens.  They sometimes come to us quietly, faintly.  Sometimes we might miss them.  And sometimes they’re just not what we want to see.  Maybe as your waiting on the world to change, there are signs that its actually happening.

If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us into [God’s] superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely close-hugged truths…we have misunderstood the words of Christianity. (Karl Rahner)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Just Beneath the Surface

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Isaiah 35:1-10 (Advent 3A)

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Once again, we get a vision of what’s to come.  But this is not some image of a future, far-off world.  It’s not some reward we’ll get for living semi-righteous lives.  It’s not some other place or other realm of being.   This is God’s vision for the world we have now.  And it is there already, planted and growing, in some places maybe even beginning to bloom.  But here we are, supplanted in our current ways, sometimes feeling strangled and parched, often feeling held down by things we create or things others do to us.  But Albert Einstein once said that “your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”  So, what is it you imagine?  What preview do you see?

The writer of this passage was probably writing to an exiled people, a people who had been so beat up and put down that they were having a hard time imagining anything else.  But this writer looked at a world that was in chaos and saw order, looked at a road so overgrown that it was thought to be impassable and saw a highway, and looked at the thirsty, lifeless desert and saw blooms.  And then we read of a scene that was beyond what anyone ever thought would happen.  He envisions these exiles, these people whose hopes and dreams had long been quashed and whose lives had become nothing more than an exercise in survival dancing and singing with joy as they returned home.

Yes, it’s hard to imagine beyond where we are.  We are waiting, waiting on the world to change.  And we believe it will.  Our faith tells us that.  But belief, even faith, has to include some imagination, don’t you think?  I mean, faith is not an intellectual pursuit.  We don’t read some passage in the Bible and immediately respond with faith.  We’re not called to some blind acceptance of what we’re told.  We don’t have faith in something just because we read some account of it.  Faith comes because God gives us the wherewithal to imagine it, to imagine it into being.  Imagination dares to see what the eyes cannot see.  (That kind of sounds like faith, doesn’t it?)  So, let your imaginations go wild.

It’s always there, beneath the surface.  It’s always there, planted, ready to sprout.  That’s what faith is about—imagining what will be.  I mean, imagine that everyone has enough.  Imagine that the world is at peace.  Imagine that everyone steps up to care for the earth, to slow down the decay and the destruction we humans have caused.  Imagine that everyone has equal rights and acceptance, and a voice, and a vote.  Imagine that our first concern is not ourselves but our neighbor.  Imagine that government is about our voice rather than a fight over control.  Imagine that everyone is safe from harm, safe from gun violence, safe from human trafficking, safe from hunger and hurt and desperation.  Imagine that we all see ourselves as instruments of imagination, people of faith.

In this season of Advent, we are not just called to look toward that day about which the writer of this passage writes.  We are reminded to look FOR that day, to imagine and believe it into being and to see what of it is already there.  We live within a holy tension of the way the world is and the way God calls the world to be.  But we are reminded that the blooms in the desert are already planted.  Barbara Brown Taylor says that “Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world.  But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.  Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. (An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith, p. 15.)  So, what if everything that you saw, everything that you touched, was indeed holy–maybe not holy in the “holier-than-thou, overly-righteous, inaccessible-to-the-ordinary-human” sense, but rather “thick with divine possibility,” filled with the promise of redemption, the promise that buried deep within its being were deserts waiting to bloom?  Just imagine.

Once, when I was particularly depressed, a friend and pacifist from Holland told me something very beautiful: “The people who worked to build the cathedrals in the Middle Ages never saw them completed. It took two hundred years and more to build them. Some stone-cutter somewhere sculpted a beautiful rose; it was his life’s work, and it was all he ever saw. But he never entered into the completed cathedral. But one day, the cathedral was really there. You must imagine peace the same way. (Dorothy Soelle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Just a Little Shoot

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Isaiah 11:1-10 (Advent 2A)

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

10On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

As we’ve many times noted, this season of Advent is a practice in visioning.  It is a time of looking toward what “shall” be (as the use of the word “shall” appears at least sixteen times in today’s Scripture).  It gives us something to look toward, something for which we can purposefully and intentionally wait.  It gives us something to hang onto when the storms toss us about.

And, yet, this passage is set in a time not unlike our own.  The people fear they are losing their way, fear that their world is changing into something that they will no longer recognize, fear that it is all slipping away.  And there, there in the midst of the pain and the uncertainty, in the midst of hopes cut off and loss and despair prevailing, in the midst of empires threatening and power wrecking, God comes to sit with us in the season.  And we are given a vision, a vision of a different way, a vision of righteousness and equity and faithfulness and peace, a vision of what shall be.  There is no promise given that the nation would rise again.  Things are not going to return to the way they were.  Time and space will never sync enough for that to happen.  That never happens.  But the prophet’s vision includes a shoot, a tiny shoot that will appear.  The shoot will not become a mighty cedar.  It will not overtake the earth.  Rather, the shoot will begin what shall be.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.  It will be fragile yet tenacious.  It will grow where no one ever thought it would.  It will push back the stone and become life.  It will rise up and be anew.  That shoot, that tiny shoot that many are sometimes tempted to cut down and clear away, contains everything.  In it is the very DNA, the written story, of what God envisions for Creation.  That shoot contains our story.  That shoot contains your story.

What will you do to tend to this seed, this fledgling shoot?  What will you do as it grows and strengthens?  We often talk about ourselves as the harvesters, those that help bring God’s vision to be.  But in this Advent time, we are called to be those who care and tend, those who see this shoot even as the world around us is often filled with weeds and despair.  Do you see it?  It’s there…there on the dead stump, just beginning to grow.  Life is pushing through.  It is yours, your story, your life.

You must give birth to your images.  They are the future waiting to be born.  Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future must enter you long before it happens.  Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Lyrics

Song Like A Seed (Sara Thomsen)

Ay, what to sing about in these days
What rhyme or melody, turn of phrase?
What is your story now, where is your gaze?
Ay, what to sing about in these days

Towers are tumbling, tumbling down
Fortresses fumbling, crumbling crowns
Governments grumbling, as they drown
Towers are tumbling, tumbling down

Plant your song like a seed
Hold your heart like a prayer bead
Give your breath like a tree
Set your soul’s deep love free

I know a woman who walks and prays
Follows the river’s old rambling ways
Eagle flies over and butterflies play
Watching the warrior walk and pray

What is your story now, where is your heart?
This is a one-act play, what’s your part?
In every ending there’s some new start
What is your story now, where is your heart?

Plant your song like a seed
Hold your heart like a prayer bead
Give your breath like a tree
Set your soul’s deep love free

There is a garden that grows at night
Then in the winter it tucks in tight
Drifts off in dreams about birds in flight
That carry the seeds of this garden’s life

Ay, what to sing about in these days
What rhyme or melody, turn of phrase?
What is your story now, where is your gaze?
Ay, what to sing about in these days

© 2018 Sara Thomsen

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Light Shining in the Darkness

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Scripture Text: Isaiah 9:2-7 (Christmas Eve text)

2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 3You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. 4For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

I used to live in a neighborhood where I always passed this wonderful old French colonial house with wonderful verandas lining both floors of the house.  For years, the house would outline the verandas with twinkling strings of lights during the Advent and Christmas seasons.  It was beautiful.  Then, for some reason I’ve never completely understood, they began to add more and more lights each year.  They started by stringing lights across the verandas three, five, seven, fifteen times.  Then, the next year, they did the same to the house. What was once a delightful twinkling of lights became what can only be described as a veritable blob of lights.  The house had been overtaken by light. And it was no longer beautiful.  In fact, it was a little off-putting.

So, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  This journey toward the Light is coming to an end, so to speak.  We know now that is does not actually end at all.  It’s more of a turn, a tilt, a leaning in.  But as we do that, we need to think about our time in the darkness.  See, light is not pretty or comforting or even helpful alone.  It’s blinding.  You can’t even see anything anymore.  Light is at its best when it illuminates the darkness and creates shadows and contrasts so that we can truly look at the Light.

Much of our lives, much of our existence is about traveling in darkness.  It is a holy darkness.  God created it.  And then God created Light to push back the darkness.  Now notice that it doesn’t say anywhere that the light is meant to dispel the darkness or cover up the darkness or in some way destroy the darkness into utter extinction.  Darkness is.  The Light is.  They live together, woven into a holy mix of light and shadows and clouds and stars and deep darkness.  That is life.  That is Life.  And that is where the people that walk there see the Light.  So, our act of coming out of the darkness into the marvelous Light is not one of leaving but of looking in another direction and finally learning to travel in the dark.  That’s called faith. 

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.

It gets darker and darker…and then Jesus is born.  (Ann Lamott) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

A Light in the Window

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Scripture Text: Psalm 18: 1-3, 28

1I love you, O Lord, my strength. 2The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 3I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies…28It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.

Remember once again in the first chapter of Genesis when God created Light?  The Light was created to push back the darkness.  It didn’t “win” over the darkness; darkness was not gone.  This is not a light war.  Even darkness was created by God.  But then came Light, pushing back the darkness, re-creating the darkness into Light.  In essence, Light illumines the darkness.  God lights up the darkness.

This Psalm can be traced back to the era of the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) before the Babylonian Exile.  It was considered a Royal Psalm, words echoing the belief that God would save the king, that God was the one behind the king, the God who had always been strong and reliant, the God whose actions were always just and merciful and would continue to be.

What, then, does it mean for God to light our darkness?  What does it mean for God, strong and reliant, just and merciful, to push back the darkness in our lives and illumine where we stand?  Are we ready for that?  Do we trust in that?  As we’ve mentioned before, sometimes the darkness gets a little too comfortable.  We become accustomed to strategically hiding part of ourselves, which is, of course, easier in the darkness.  And, after all, there’s always still darkness, right?  But if we truly allow ourselves to look toward the Light, the darkness will begin to subside.  We’re not used to the Light.  Our eyes will sting at first until we clear the remnants of darkness from them.  But when we begin to focus, it will all come into view—pushing back the darkness.

Try it.  All it takes is a candle—one candle in the darkness.  If you light one candle, there is Light. Maybe it’s not everything you want.  Maybe it’s not enough to read or something.  But it’s enough to light your way.  It just takes one candle to begin to push back the darkness.  It just takes something small.  I think that’s how God does it.  I think that’s how God has always done it.  God doesn’t turn on all the lights at once.  Sometimes God slips into the darkness like a baby in a manger. 

We’ve always been in darkness.  I think that’s so we can see the Light.  God doesn’t supply us with headlights or spotlights or even a strategically-placed flashlight.  You know why?  Because we don’t need light to find Light.  God created darkness for us.  It was the place that we were born before our eyes could adjust to the Light.  It was the place where we grew and learned to see the Light.  But through our lives, God always put a light in the window, just enough Light so that we would know where to go.  God begins to light our darkness, lighting one lamp after another.  Because that’s all it takes to light up our darkness.  Look toward the Light and the darkness will be pushed away.  Look for the Light in the window.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t. (Blaise Pascal) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Whispers of Light

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Scripture Text: Matthew 10:24-27

24“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! 26“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

Have no fear…do not be afraid…fear not…How many times have we encountered that in Scripture? Well, apparently, “fear not” is in the Bible 365 times according to the trustworthy Google machine.  Are you sensing a theme? So, of what are you afraid?  We’ve probably outgrown worrying about the monsters under the bed or the ghosts in the closet.  But we’re all afraid of something—health issues, financial issues, the pandemic, global terrorism, or just being found out.  Yeah, most of us are afraid that others will discover that we’re not as competent or self-assured or as put together as we project.  (Or maybe that’s just me!)  Most of us are afraid that that façade we have so carefully crafted around our lives will be pierced and we’ll have to be honest with those around us and, even worse, ourselves.

Fear not…have no fear of them…well, easy for YOU to say.  The promise is that everything will be made known. That’s what the full Light does, remember?  It exposes everything.  And imagine how glorious that would be to no longer have to hide those parts of yourself from the world!  Be not afraid!  What’s the worse that could happen, right? 

So, do you remember that whole notion of needing to die to live, die to self and be resurrected as a New Creation?  I think that’s the thing.  Living in the darkness makes it easy to hide things.  But this light, this light shows us everything.  So those things hidden in the darkness will die.  They will just fade away.  The things in the Light will survive.  The Light is coming.  Right now it’s just a whisper.  But we know what’s out there.  Our faith tells us that.  And we know that we have to let go of the darkness, we have to let go of the things that we hide.  The whispers of Light are gently showing us how to let go.  Because the Light will give us everything.

God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. (Annie Dillard) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli