31:8 | It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
As some of Moses' last words (and his last direct words) to Joshua, I think these words speak well to people in transition who look at mountains bigger than what they can climb and dreams bigger than they dared dream. These are the words given to someone whose devastation from the past - watching suffering, death, and the precariousness of life in the middle places - and their dreams for the future collided. The orbit of faith, in the revolving door of anxiety and insecurity, brings us to the place where we question ourselves, those we love, and God.
It is here these words preach.
It is here these words sing.
It is here these words give confidence the dream is real.
I think that even most Christians tacitly believe God both fails and forsakes us, ambivalently watching as we suffer. Where is God when...? What do we say when we have no easy answers? What do we say when our experience, our understanding of God, and everything within us is called into question with the reality that lands on our doorsteps? What do we do when we live and pray faithfully and watch as the hopes of our futures crumble into the insecurity of our pasts?
We open our hands. We stumble to the altar, not sure what happened on the Cross, but sure that whatever happened there was for us and for everyone else who can't see through their pain or fear or depression or selfishness or bigotry or hatred or self-reliance. It takes out of our hands our ability to carefully plan our futures and places in our hands moments of awe and transcendent beauty that we would have never seen if the path had been just so.
We are scared and we are dismayed. Our emotions bubble up at embarrasing times and in the wrong places. People judge and categorize us, making us small so we can fit into the empty boxes that live in all of our minds. Sometimes, we try to fit in those boxes. Sometimes we look at the boxes and know we'll never fit but that we're still supposed to and there's nothing we can do about it.
But we can dream. We can dream of a world where the boxes lie empty like 10 o'clock Christmas morning, where the wrapping paper and ribbons mean nothing more than a formality and the box nothing more than a bottomless container for our imaginations. Oh friends, we can dream. We can fan the flickers of flame and say these words over and over again to ourselves until we remember what it felt like when we believed them.
And then we do.
Out of failure and forsakenness, out of fear and dismay, the Holy Spirit rises out of the ashes of humanity, and she sings. I think this might be her song:
As some of Moses' last words (and his last direct words) to Joshua, I think these words speak well to people in transition who look at mountains bigger than what they can climb and dreams bigger than they dared dream. These are the words given to someone whose devastation from the past - watching suffering, death, and the precariousness of life in the middle places - and their dreams for the future collided. The orbit of faith, in the revolving door of anxiety and insecurity, brings us to the place where we question ourselves, those we love, and God.
It is here these words preach.
It is here these words sing.
It is here these words give confidence the dream is real.
I think that even most Christians tacitly believe God both fails and forsakes us, ambivalently watching as we suffer. Where is God when...? What do we say when we have no easy answers? What do we say when our experience, our understanding of God, and everything within us is called into question with the reality that lands on our doorsteps? What do we do when we live and pray faithfully and watch as the hopes of our futures crumble into the insecurity of our pasts?
We open our hands. We stumble to the altar, not sure what happened on the Cross, but sure that whatever happened there was for us and for everyone else who can't see through their pain or fear or depression or selfishness or bigotry or hatred or self-reliance. It takes out of our hands our ability to carefully plan our futures and places in our hands moments of awe and transcendent beauty that we would have never seen if the path had been just so.
We are scared and we are dismayed. Our emotions bubble up at embarrasing times and in the wrong places. People judge and categorize us, making us small so we can fit into the empty boxes that live in all of our minds. Sometimes, we try to fit in those boxes. Sometimes we look at the boxes and know we'll never fit but that we're still supposed to and there's nothing we can do about it.
But we can dream. We can dream of a world where the boxes lie empty like 10 o'clock Christmas morning, where the wrapping paper and ribbons mean nothing more than a formality and the box nothing more than a bottomless container for our imaginations. Oh friends, we can dream. We can fan the flickers of flame and say these words over and over again to ourselves until we remember what it felt like when we believed them.
And then we do.
Out of failure and forsakenness, out of fear and dismay, the Holy Spirit rises out of the ashes of humanity, and she sings. I think this might be her song:
31:8 | It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
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