Reading
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!
2 Corinthians 4:7-12 (The Message)
Reflection
There are days when I don’t know what to make of all that happens as the world keeps spinning. I don’t know how I feel – not because I lack emotion or thought, but because I am exhausted.
Recently a friend of mine shared a simple reflection exercise. It was built around a handful of questions from writer Emily Freeman: As you pay attention to this season of life, what do you see? What’s one question you’re asking about your future? What’s bringing you life today? What do you need? What do you hope for?
He didn’t necessarily intend for the answers to be shared, but rather written as an act of honest reflection – an act of acceptance to the invitation Jesus gives us to come as we are. Tired, anxious, excited, unsure, hungry, bored, ecstatic. However we are, wherever we may be, Jesus’ invitation is to come.
I think these questions wound up being preparatory for the week to come. Yesterday, as I sat on campus, my phone buzzed with an alert that there had been another mass shooting in Minneapolis. This time at a Catholic church where students had gathered in convocation in preparation for the school year to come. As of this writing, two were murdered and seventeen maimed.
Looking back on the words I wrote during that reflection, my hopes now feel a little foolish. Hoping for peace. Needing gentleness. Accepting that healing is long and easily distracted. Maybe you find yourself in a similar spot. Maybe your phone buzzed with different reasons. Maybe it didn’t have to – you find them in your homes, your hearts.
Then again, our faith takes root in the corners and cracks of our lives which feel hopeless and lifeless, fearful and diminished. Our story – the story of Jesus – isn’t sterile, still, or silent.
Our story has been told from inside prison cells and in famine years. It’s been passed over nightly fires and down through generations. It’s traveled oceans and through time. It’s emerged from upper rooms and empty tombs, and come to us as we are.
Paul’s words – Jesus’ words – were written in chains, not from pedestals of power. They’re words surrounded by desperation and weakness, but filled with dogged sobriety and determination to find a better way. These words remind us that hope isn’t a feeling we conjure; it’s a gift we cling to when nothing feels as it should.
Pressed and perplexed, tired but not abandoned. And still, Jesus remains.
May we be stubborn enough to hope and gentle enough to trust.
May we be faithful enough to love and willing to endure long enough to pass the word to the next person who needs it.
Our words cannot be destroyed. They cast light out into the darkness because the light, the Spirit of God, is alive – flickering and dancing and redeeming – in us.
Prayer
God of the weary and worn,
Friend of the tired and companion of the broken –
Hold us and remain with us.
Scrape the muddy mess from our souls,
And soothe the warm ruddiness of our anger and fear.
Shine bright within us.
Shine bright through us.
Give the morning new brightness because you are with us.
And we are not forsaken.
Redeem us all.
Heal us all.
Come God, we are here.
Amen.
