Romans 8:18-27
18I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Just a few months ago, I discovered how at least two stories from my past fit into God’s calling in my life and my prayer for God‘s vision for the world. I’ll share one here. It is my earliest recollection of crying when watching a movie or television show. I was in 1st grade and up way past my bedtime watching a rerun of the Twilight Zone. In this particular episode, several senior adults in a nursing home decide they are tired of being old and being told they can do nothing, and so they organize a kick-the-can game for the next night. While most of the adults gleefully accept the offer to play and perhaps regain some semblance of youthfulness, one grumplepuss Grandpa refuses to join the others, thinking them crazy. In typical Twilight Zone fashion, the act of playing transforms the elderly into children, the kick the can game their own fountain of youth. Seeing this, the old man who had refused to join earlier begs for a second chance to play with the others and also be transformed, but it is too late, and in the end he sits holding the can, alone on the steps of the home. And I, a young girl, sat alone, in the darkness of my living room, crying at the isolation and breakdown of relationship there before me on the TV screen.
In my own journey, I see reconciliation, the righting of broken relationships between people, both individuals and groups, as part of God’s vision for the world. Like the exhilarating feeling of putting puzzle pieces together to form a whole picture, I have put together some of my experiences and my own longings as I have continued to discern my call from God. Most lead me not to prophetic proclamations against oppressive systems, though there is need for that, but to the simplicity of right relationship with fellow man and woman, not that this is a simple thing to accomplish. Walter Wink wrote in our reading for this week that “miracle is just a word we use for the things the Powers have deluded us into thinking that God is unable to do.” For me, I feel God already crying out through me that the miracle that God is able to do is to be the healing salve that can mend broken relationships, that can mend all the ways that we allow the Powers, whether through corrupt governments or soulless institutions or even the anonymity from others with which we live, to steal our humanness, our humaneness, our compassion and love for others.
On the background of my laptop computer is a quote from C.S. Lewis that reads, “There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind.” As I meditated on the Scripture and the theological reading for this week, I was reminded that living in the presence of God, recognizing our part in co-creation, living into the Biblical precedent of prayerful bargaining requires that we leave a few things behind. Like Wink indicated, we leave behind the mentality that we have to do everything, that if the world is to be changed, it is up to us. Yes, God calls us to work for change, but we have to be grounded in the belief, as is Wink, that it is God’s power that answers the world’s needs, and not our own. This is one of the greatest deceptions of the Powers in my own life, the removal of my trust in God’s ability to intervene, my security in God’s faithfulness. For me, I have to leave behind the mentality that prayer is something I must do, words I must create. I find direction in Wink’s words, “Prayer is not magic; it does not always “work.” It is not something we do, but a response to what God is already doing within us and the world.” My part in co-creation, in the work of reconciliation among fellow human beings, is not my own invention or idea of how God should intervene, how God should change hearts. Instead, I am a reaction to the “sighs too deep for words” of God’s spirit within me, God’s call already active in the world. I am reminded that my prayer for healing in my own life and in the world, peace among people is an invitation to miraculous action to a God already present in my soul and in the world. And now I close with a poem “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, that reminds me that even when we fail to invite God’s action into the world with our prayers for justice, peace, and reconciliation, God is still in the world:
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
If interested, here is a link to the Twilight Zone episode http://www.myspace.com/video/o/the-twilight-zone-kick-the-can/19615645 (I think)
Peace and Grace,
Amanda
No comments:
Post a Comment