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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
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
Good to Be Seen
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders went up the mountain, and they saw the God of Israel. Under God’s feet there was something like a sapphire pavement, as clear and blue as the heavens. They beheld God, and they ate and drank. - Exodus 24:9-11...
Let There Be No Dew or Rain
David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan: “How the mighty have fallen! You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor bounteous fields! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, anointed with oil no more.” - 2 Samuel...
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” - 1 Corinthians 12:21 (NRSV) Actually, the eye can say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” The eye can discern texture without the hand, after all, and...
Playing
O Wisdom, how diverse are your works! In the great sea alone, there are countless creeping critters and all sizes of living things! Humans build ships to cross it, but you form Leviathan to play in it. - Psalm 104:24-26 (adapted) I’m sitting at the end of a long...
Miracles
In every dawn veiled by silent fog, before the sun scatters its mystery; In every dark crevice of earth's womb, before the seed breaks open to root; In every gasp of the unknown, before certainty cements itself: a miracle of wild possibility.
How Shall I Receive You?
As an ass, playing the role of jester? As the outlandish actor in the scene, cast to make the comfortable laugh and the disenchanted daydream? As a stone, the unseen understudy? As the patient watcher in the wings, ready to leap up and shout one line if only the leads...
A Jar of Oil
The widow of one of the prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and now creditors come to take my two children as slaves.” Elisha said to her, “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Nothing except a jar of oil.” (2 Kings 4:1-2,...
The Measure of Humanity
“The question, ‘What is man*?’ is one of the most important questions confronting any generation,” began Martin Luther King, Jr. “The whole political, social, and economic structure of a society is largely determined by its answer to this pressing question.” King was...
Sensual
How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful! Your hair is like goats along the hills; your teeth are like shorn ewes that have been washed; your lips are like a crimson thread—so lovely; your cheeks are like pomegranate halves. (Song of Songs 4:1-3, abridged)...
