Dear Edwards Church Community,
To acknowledge the pain I sense many of us, in and beyond the Edwards community, carry but do not often acknowledge out loud, I recently chose a quote from Psalm 13 as the message to display on the sign out front. The psalm begins:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long? (Psalm 13: 1 – 2)
One person who thanked me for that open recognition of a broadly shared interior pain is a retired local physician, someone whose daily work gave him a lifetime of stories about “where it hurt” when people came to see him.
Walter Brueggemann, a leading Christian scholar of the Old Testament, writes in his wonderful short book Praying the Psalms about how the psalms give us a way to express our feelings to God when our feelings are close to overwhelming. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Countless faithful Jews had already prayed those words from Psalm 22 long before Jesus cried them out on the cross.
The literary genius of Mark and Matthew using those familiar words to describe that moment comes in how it signals the promise of resurrection. Psalm 22, well know to the early audiences of their gospels, proclaims near its end that God hears our cries. God responds in ways often impossible to see while we are still walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Though still in the future, those greener pastures exist.
Because we are, like our Jewish friends and neighbors, “people of the book,” even if ours has a few more chapters, we know there is more to the story than what we are going through right now – whether that is the pandemic or the election, unemployment or growing demands at work, the love of family we have not seen in way too long or family we need a day or more to rest from. Those greener pastures are real.
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. (Psalm 13: 3 – 4)
Bravery is not the absence of fear but being willing to go on despite our fear. Faith is not the absence of all doubt but being willing to trust in a promise not yet fully realized, when we have experienced enough to believe that it will be realized someday.
I will probably not live to know my great grandchildren. My first grandchild was born when I was 64. The odds simply do not favor it. But barring an untimely death, odds are good I will get to watch little Mac and any siblings or cousins he may have grow up and become young adults. That gives me more motivation to stay healthy, because even in the growth and change since his birth 19 months ago I see a bright, engaging young boy full of potential emerging. I want to know the person he becomes and each step along his way. Nothing could be more natural or more of a blessing.
Some of you lived through the introduction of the polio vaccine. You recall how families worried about the fate of children born before that vaccine became widely available. You remember how we, as a society, recovered from the accident involving several bad batches from one manufacturer. Others recall the number of people, especially children, stricken with measles and its side effects before that vaccine became widely available. We know from history how this works. Greener pastures are coming into view, just over the next hill.
When I consider the projections provided by politicians (less weight) and public health experts (more weight), I “guesstimate” we are most likely to see vaccines widely available sometime in the warmer months of 2021. Given current skepticism in some quarters about those vaccines, when we might achieve herd immunity remains unclear.
But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13: 5-6)
I trust God and God’s people, and not just because the Bible offers examples of how God keeps God’s promise to be with us and help us. I trust God because I have learned from experience that God gives herself to us when we give ourselves – our focus and energy, our talents, and in some cases even the “shirt off our backs” – to relieve personal suffering and uproot systemic injustice.
“Knowing that the road is long, we choose to walk together. Finding strength in our diversity, we call on all our talents to worship and serve. Encountering the world’s joys and suffering, we offer ourselves as instruments of love and justice. Longing to find the holy in ourselves and others, we listen for God’s still-speaking voice.” We are finding our way and finding God by serving all God’s people.
Stay safe and stay well,
Michael