Faithfulness

 

It is not the place of people of faith to chastise the world for its lack of faith, as if the world could be scolded into coming to its senses.  It is, rather, the task of people of faith to be faithful, to live as those who belong the God we have met in Jesus Christ.  Tom Long

This week, we began with you blessing your house.  I pray the blessing lingers in the air offering you a safe space for rest and renew, a place of refuge amid a too chaotic world.  I invited you to bless the rooms in your home on Monday, the kitchen where you brew your coffee and the bedroom where you lay your head down to sleep and pray the lord your soul to keep.  On Tuesday, we moved on to exploring the spaciousness of your soul ~ that you have many rooms within you.  Some of these places within us are often left unacknowledged, to gather cobwebs or where we shove the “stuff” of our life we don’t want to deal with right now…we will totally get that…tomorrow or maybe next week or maybe never.  As you begin the risky exploration of your own life, we shined a light on your inner critic that will love to point out all the ways you will fumble, faulter and fail.  Yet, you also have an inner ally who is cheering you on and dusting you off when you fall.  Let’s face it, sometimes the critic isn’t just internal but out there.  People who believe that you are entitled to their opinion…and offer you feedback on how to fix or save or what to do with your one wild and precious life.  This can cause us to feel shame or blame or less than when others tell us what to do, think, or feel.  This is why I love Tom Long’s quote above about not scolding or canceling or cajoling or raining guilt on another person until they are drenched.  As people of faith, we are called to be faithful.  Faith, for me, is growing in the image of God for the sake of the other.  I continue to let God loose in my life, to rummage and roam around my mind, heart, soul, words, and actions to the sacred love shine a light on the good, holy, the broken, and less-than-perfectness.  I do this so that God’s light might shine brighter through me to others.  I don’t try to “fix” someone else, as though I am a spiritual mechanic who can diagnosis using some divine insight.  I am a human, created in God’s image and who is beautifully imperfect.  Part of the reason why I began a Wayless Way Book Club is because we all need to lean in and listen to our own life amid the noise of the world.  It is so much easier to externalize our hurt or woundedness, because truly people are broken.  But expecting you can change another person, convince them with enough wisdom or insight or charts does not usually work.  And so, of course, as Tom Long says, we turn to chastising or criticizing or cynicism or canceling.  Or, we could turn toward how we are showing up in the less-than-perfectness.  During this Epiphany season, remember God didn’t break and burst onto the scene of the earth and immediately get to work.  We know very, very little of Jesus’ growing up years.  We have no awkward photo from middle school or his report card from 9^th grade or how well he did at is bar mitzvah ~ if his voice cracked when reading the Psalms.  Life is always a process of growing in the image of God for the sake of another.  I pray you will listen to your words today, your comments and thoughts, and ways of interacting with others.  May God continue to rummage and roam around your life this day.  Amen.