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Praise
Praise the Lord! Praise God, sun and moon; praise God, all you shining stars! Praise God from the earth, you sea monsters and creatures of the depths, you fire and hail, snow and frost!
(Psalm 148:1-2 & 7-8, NRSV adapted)
What makes the T-Rex dinosaur a scientific fact and the Loch Ness monster an ancient myth?
It’s a rhetorical question, mainly. To a large extent, I believe the distinction doesn’t matter. It’s certainly not worth fighting over. It doesn’t make much difference in the daily lives of millions of people.
But the question of science vs. myth points my spirit toward something important: faith needs fiction, perhaps far more than it needs facts.
By which I mean: faith needs imagination. Wild and wondering and expansive imagination. Faith needs the unimaginable and the improbable. Faith needs awe. It needs questions that cannot be answered; it needs stories that reach beyond the limits of knowledge.
While faith might long to claim certainty, it does its best work when it claims surrender. When it gives in to hope. When it opts for unearned trust. When it lives in dreams and aspirations beyond what can be proven. When it tells stories.
Madeleine L’Engle wrote in Glimpses of Grace: “Myth is the closest approximation to truth available to the finite human being.”
Somewhere in the chasms of the oceans, there are sea monsters praising God. The Bible tells us so, although we may never know whether the psalmist was writing about a cousin of Loch Ness, a descendent of T-Rex, or a creature of the psalmist’s own imagination. The provability of the monster isn’t the point.
The point is creation’s praise for God, which is beyond imagining. In fact, creation’s praise of God is so vast and wild that it can only be told in fiction.
Prayer: Praise to you, O God, for the praises too mystical and magical for me to perceive!
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
Bad News
The spirit of the Holy One is upon me, because the One has anointed me and sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of divine favor, and the day of God’s vengeance.
(Isaiah 61:1-2, NRSV adapted)
On that holy day when the prisoners are set free, a whole lot of people will be out of a job.
Also, a whole lot of public services will be halted. Some wildfires will rage without resistance. Some streams and parks and highways will not be cleaned of litter. Some sandbags will be unfilled and unavailable for the next hurricane. All un- and under-paid tasks currently assigned to the incarcerated in our prison system.
When Isaiah’s vision is realized, what some experience as a year of God’s favor will be experienced by others as an endless day of God’s vengeance:
The oppressor will no longer be propped up by power over the discounted. The captor will lose their chains of control over the imprisoned. The mercenary will no longer be insulated by selfishness against the outcries of the brokenhearted.
That holy day of divine release will make many people very uncomfortable. Probably you, too. Probably me, too. Because even if we don’t consider ourselves to be capital “o” Oppressors, even if we have been on the heartbroken side more often than the heartbreaker side, even if we agree that the prison system is unjust, we still live and breathe and carve out comfort zones within systems of oppression.
We might not recognize the day of God’s good news. We might even, heaven forbid, lament the day as bad news in rejection of our comfort zones being transgressed.
Let the good news come mightily nonetheless.
Prayer: Teach my comfortable heart to love others’ good news, to break for others’ pain, to cry with joy at others’ release—even as much as I would do for my own.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
Christmas Praise
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Love
What we have confined, O Love, you have exploded. What we have defined, O Love, you have confounded. What we have constrained, O Love, you have released. What we have diminished, O Love, you have overflowed. What we have cast in stone, O Love, you have made to dance....
Song of the Prophet Mary
Let this breath be an insight into your glory and this flesh be alive with your joy -- for who else is so powerful yet so merciful as to be revealed through me for the sake of blessing? It is the same One whose name is told through generations and whispered in...
Cry Out!
How long, O Peace, will we hold one another hostage?How long will we demand endless penalty for every debt? "Make straight and wide a path in the wilderness so that all might travel safely in God's presence,"said the prophet -- but no, we insist, it can't be so easy....
Rock Bottom
O God, the nations have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food. - Psalm 79:1-2 (NRSV) The bleakness of early Advent – these first few days when the lectionary readings...
Riotous Reign
The Lord reigns! Let the earth rejoice! Clouds and thick darkness are all around the Holy One. Fire goes before the Lord, consuming adversaries on every side. God’s lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the...
In the Wee Small Hours
On that day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord; and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon; and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took...
As Far as the Western Sea
Not me, O Life, but us. Not mine, O Life, but ours. As far as the eastern horizon, as far as the western sea, all that is and all that can be. Not us or them, O Life, but every. Not us or theirs, O Life, but all's. From the first wisp of dust to its final sighing...
Bargaining
You have said to me, "Come," but you have left me to wander in search of your desired "where." You have named me, "Blessed," but you have been unrelenting with every trial on my life. You have said to me, "Be still and know," but you have covered the eyes of my heart...
