It rained again yesterday. The occasional thunderclap was a little too loud for those of us still soggy from the days of flooding and the weeks of aftermath. We are not at our best.
On Sunday we read the end of First Corinthians, a word meant to orient us and reorient us at the same time. These words help us know who we are, how to walk with Jesus. “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong, and let all that you do be done in love.” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14)
But these are more than words of orientation. For those of us who suffer, these words reorient us. In times of disorientation, they do more than remind. They re-situate us in the promises of God. The words echo “when we are weak, then we are strong.” Be strong? We meet that command of Scripture with the old prayer, “God, give me strength.”
And God is faithful.
But we are not at our best. Some of our Bering family lost so much in the flood. Some of our Bering family are dealing with physical pain, health issues, hope of recovery, and even some personal, family pain. During these reminders of our own vulnerability when the limits of our humanity stare us down unrelentingly, these are the times when we may not be able on our own to stand firm. We may not feel like being courageous today. And as far as actually being strong goes, that may be one of those times when God is just asking too much.
But God keeps speaking to us, reorienting us with the final word of 1 Corinthians 16, not as a list of individual encouragements to individuals, but a group of encouragements to a group of Christians. In this case, that’s us.
Keep alert. We keep watch together.
Stand firm in your faith. “Your” is tied to the previous word to keep alert. So, y’all together, all y’all together, stand together.
Be courageous. Pardon the language from ancient times, but literally, “Act like a man until you actually become a man.” This is not about pretending to be tough. Being “courageous” was foremost about an attitude of willingness to become a man of character, integrity, and service. A big focus of old Greek education was the shaping of the man, which eventually, even in early Christian times, was rightly expanded to include women and children so that everyone is reminded together that we are becoming something we cannot be without the teaching and formation of God working in us.
Be strong. Likewise, even when we are weak, God gives us strength. Even at times like these when we know we are not at our best, we are still being renewed day by day.
Therefore, let all that we do be done in love. That is a good final word. Amen.
The waters of the most devastating rainfall in United States history had yet to recede before the blasphemy began. Armchair preachers decided it was time to speak, when in reality the better choice would have been to keep silent. “Hurricane Harvey was God’s way of rebuking the sinners,” was one such blasphemy shot into cyberspace like an unaimed shotgun.
I thought about such ungodly observations while many of our church helped clean out the house of one of our families who lost just about everything in the floods. Mind you, this household is a household of prayer, of Christlike hospitality, a place that continually seeks God’s will and shares the joy of the Lord. Many of us have prayed in that house. Sang in that house. Danced in that house. Raised glasses of cheer because we are loved, and because we love.
Granted, none of us are without sin. We know that. But we also know that the Lord of all creation sustains us in ways well beyond our earthly understandings. Like Elijah in 1 Kings 19 who experienced God, we too experienced God in a gentle whisper after the storm.
Each hug in the long lines at the grocery store was God’s gentle whisper.
Every time we carried waterlogged furniture into the front yard was the sound of God’s gentle whisper.
Every donation, every bottle of water, every time someone asked, “How can I help?” were all the places that God showed up and proclaimed, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”
These were the works of God. These continue to be the moments when love remains, when it is better for us to proclaim God’s presence, not in the storm, but in the gentle whisper that comes after.
Before the eyes open, it’s a deep breath. Maybe two. If I’m on my side, I roll over onto my back. Another breath. Crane my neck slightly up off the pillow to look across the dark room to the one light, the red light across that most often show three numbers, usually beginning with a 3 or 4, a 5 if I’m lucky.
I throw back the sheet gently so as not to wake Jen, slide my legs out, see my way in the dark into the bathroom to put on my glasses where I leave them every night. Grab a shirt, throw it on, walk to the door, open it, walk through it, close it softly behind me, and go downstairs where my not-so-subtle tomcat yells at me for food regardless of the time.
If I am up before the timer on the coffee pot is set to go off, and I usually am, I walk over to it first thing and push the button to launch it. A man’s gotta have his priorities. And most of the time I just stand there for a moment, leaning against the countertop in the quiet as the cat looks up at me adoringly the way an animal adores the hand that feeds. I wait. Stand and breathe and pray.
And God always shows up.
Ten minutes later I’m pouring the first cup, and then walking over to my recliner to read. It’s my favorite quiet alone-time morning activity. Sometimes I’ll check my email, but I am trying to break that addiction. Morning is a time for quiet without advertisements and images of shortsighted tyrants on the computer. Morning is my time of waiting in hope, waiting in anticipation that something great is about to happen today, even if that something great may not look great to the majority of the world. Rarely is the great thing a booming announcement with spotlights and fanfare. Most of the time the great thing is a breath, a feeling, a blessed assurance.
And God always shows up.
Two of the people I love the most in the whole wide world will eventually come downstairs, usually with a hi or good morning, often a hug or a kiss. That’s one of the first moments of great. That is one of the moments when I feel the presence of the one who sustains the universe.
And God always shows up.
Get past breakfast and cleaning up and packing lunch for the day and so on and so on. I know God is there too, but usually I’m too busy making other plans to notice. No offense, God.
But when the garage door closes and I roll onto the throttle on my way to my office where I will pray and hope and join the work of new creation… oh, man… let me tell you… sometimes it’s one hour, sometimes it’s five. Sometimes like when I was learning Greek and history and philosophy in college and I would completely lose track of time until the librarian would come over the speakers on the top floor and inform us that in ten minutes the library would close, it’s like that when you are waiting on God.
And God always shows up.
These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments, and they are almost always in the morning. Don’t know why. But they are. Mornings are filled with greetings. Leah walking through the door with a “Good morning.” Don with his “Good morning, Jeff.” Cynthia with her, “Okay, you got a minute?” These are holy moments to me. Sunday mornings are even more concentrated. Noah taking my hand in his and saying “Thank you” whether the sermon is good or just regular. Gail’s sweet smile and her arm around my neck. Samira’s excitement on the day of the Lord. David’s faithful nod and acknowledgment that we are at church where we gather with the one who was, who is, and who is to come. These are the holy moments in the life of the church, in a community of faith, when all the other stuff that goes with church is suddenly worth it. Church is not all blue skies and rainbows. But when you gather, and when we remember why we gather, everything makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense.
And God always shows up.
It’s similar to restarting the computer when the computer is like a fresh pot of coffee before it sits for hours and starts rolling its eyes at all the inattention. After the little electronic device has spent its day opening apps to entertain, to inform, to titillate, to direct, it gets to a point where it wants to shut down like C3PO mysteriously asking Luke if he can go to sleep for a while. But when we all wake up, at least this is my experience, no bombardment of images and frustrations and negative comments have had time to distract us from that which matters the most.
And God always shows up.
These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments when God decided one day to contact a dusty old prophet, telling him to go outside, wait and get ready for what’s what. The technical Bible language is “pass by.” God tells Elijah that God is about to pass by. Same thing Jesus did that night on the lake. Pass by. It’s scary because it’s unfamiliar. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Once you get used to it, you come to realize the same thing Elijah realized in 1 Kings 19 that all the earthquakes and fires and hurricanes are not the arrivals of God. The story goes that after the earthquake came a fire. But God was in neither the earthquake nor the fire. Because after the fire came a gentle whisper, which is when Elijah pulled his cloak over his head. For me, that’s the deep breath, the walking downstairs, the ride to work, the flipping on of the lightswitch in my office in great hope and anticipation and blessed assurance that God still has something to say to the people who want nothing more than to hear that God is there, and that God still cares. Every day I wait. Every day God is faithful. Usually just a gentle whisper.
