Blog
Wrestling
Let me go,
for the long night has run its course.
Let me go,
and release me into the dawning day.
Let me go,
for now I have wrestled long enough.
Let me go,
and do not keep me for your own blessing.
Let me go,
for my life has paid your price twice over.
Let me go,
and forget my name on your tongue.
Let me go,
for your fears have prevailed over wisdom
and I must go away to find peace.
on Genesis 32:24-30
Called to Hope
I pray that the God of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God is has called you. – Ephesians 1:17-18a (NRSV, abridged)
Hope is a wild creature. Untamable. Wholly within the mysteries of God.
Hope is an alien to our daily, bodily existence. Whereas I wake up each morning and roll out of bed with the same body I had the night before, with the same aches and illnesses of the prior day, the same set of stresses, the same routines and essential tasks, the same challenges to navigate, and the same resigned face staring back at me from the mirror, hope has no care for the sameness of life or body or situation. Hope says something else is possible. “These are your bones and sinews and cells? Great, we’re going to do something new! This is the day you envision for yourself? Let’s interrupt all that with new thoughts and dreams!”
I commonly try to tame hope. I limit it to my location, I box it into my past experiences, I quell it with reason. When I’m not careful, I contort it with my theology, confining it to heaven or lowballing it to just-barely-above-hell. I make a disaster of hope when I add it to my “should” list: “I should do better, I should finance my children’s dreams, I should write twenty books, I should have plans in place to achieve my hopes.”
But hope with a plan isn’t hope. It’s a plan … and that’s lovely, but it’s self-made and assumes the self I already have in the space it already occupies and the life it already knows.
Hope—the hope to which God calls us—comes from an alien space, a wild space, a holy space. And from that space, hope offers possibilities we cannot devise ourselves.
Only God can.
Prayer: For all that I cannot do or be, God have mercy. Let hope overtake me.
written for the Daily Devotional
Rain in the Forecast
O children, be glad and rejoice in God, who has poured down for you abundant rain. The threshing floor shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I am your God, and you shall never again be put to shame. Then afterward, I will pour out my...
Be Careful What You Preach
The prophet Hananiah took the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, and broke it, saying, “Thus says the Lord: This is how I will break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon from the neck of all the nations.” Sometime later, the word of the Lord came to...
Love and Wonder
Understand, O dullest of people; fools, when will you be wise? The one who planted the ear also hears. The one who formed the eye also sees. The one who teaches knowledge to humankind also chastises. That same one knows our thoughts, which are but an empty breath. -...
Quiet Quitting
In an office today, an employee will close their laptop at 5:00 p.m. and go home—without their laptop in hand, without a “to do” list of emails to write before bedtime, without a stack of work papers to read before returning to the office. Why? Because work that...
Ashamed
In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. (Psalm 71:1-2, NRSV) One thing about living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the debilitating shame. The...
Plumb Line
I've been trying to climb your plumb line, O God, as if it is a measure of success or a ladder to security. When the wall showed signs of toppling, I leapt to the line to rise above it all. Forgive me. When the locusts swarmed and the harvest was threatened before it...
Kissing Calves
Idols of silver [are] made according to their understanding. “Sacrifice to these,” they say. People are kissing calves! Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes away early. - Hosea 13:2-3 (NRSV, abridged) I was not raised in a Christian...
Deathbed Confession
We have done our best, O God. Well, not our best. Sometimes not even a half-hearted attempt at "best." But we have done ... something ... and of course it was never going to last because time is finite and people are too, but, O God! We didn't prepare for death when...
Praying as Jesus Taught
Thirty sparrows clamor around the bird feeder while a squirrel plots its route to the same, and I wonder if this is faithfulness: to know what is needed and to crave it solely. Give us this day our daily bread, for you will give what is good, O God. Now let us be...
