"We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us."  Thomas Merton



Texts:

Psalm 46

Genesis 45:25—46:7

Acts 5:33-42

He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:40)

Why would the apostles be ordered not to speak the name of Jesus?  Was it  for fear of blasphemy?  Was it for fear of a political insurrection? Or were they simply wanting to wait and see what happened?  Gamaliel reasons with the lawyers: "If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God!" (Acts 5:38-39)  The fear that the Word of God will show up and actually do something is coupled with the doubt that it has anything to say that will change us.

Sometimes, we plug our ears even as we demand God speak to us.  We hunger for this Word and, at the same time, are afraid because, once let loose, we cannot control it.  The waters which the breath of God moved over now move in ways that destroy livelihoods, homes, and lives.  The Word of God has been used to ostracise, to justify murder, to subordinate particular groups of people, even as the Word speaks to those on the margins, both in the Old and New Testaments.

It is from the edges of the page that it comes to life.  A man named Cheater came to be known as Israel.  His son, abused and sold into slavery by his brothers and punished for a crime he did not commit that is called from his prison cell to have an audience with the king.  It is this same man that saves his brothers and his fathers from famine.  It is the apostles, the fishermen, the tax collectors, and the women in Luke's Gospel that illustrate Jesus' proclamation of the basileia of God.  It is reading in-between the lines that we see the pages coming to life, we see the Word does not live in the hands of those who would control it for their own ends.  The Word, as soon as we try to grasp it too tightly, slips between our fingers as we lose the wonder of what it is to have a God whose word called the world into being, whose Word brought the world into redemption, and whose Word continues coming, being both our mirror and our light, drawing us into the journey with Jacob, with Joseph, with the apostles, and with each other.  

What are we looking for on our journey?  I'm not sure any of us really knows, but we'll know it when we see it.