Blog
Boiling
Thus says the Lord of hosts to all the exiles: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take spouses and have children; multiply there. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf. – Jeremiah 29:4-7 abridged (NRSV)
Perhaps the most disconcerting quality about dysfunctional despotism is its normalcy. The ego, the obsession, the absolutism that drives power-hungry authority is so commonplace it’s practically mundane. It’s predictably trite. It’s reliably thin-skinned. It demands and declares and dictates, broadcasting self-importance to counter its unexceptionality.
It’s so conventional that it’s also, I’m sorry to say, relatable.
I’ve tripped over my own ego. Shouted just to be noticed. Obsessed over the unimportant. Hoarded what power I had. Stoked the fire of insulted pride. Believed I could wield authority better than another, if only they knew.
So I’m aware, when I rage and rant over authoritarian leadership, that I’m getting cooked in the same pot I believe myself to be stirring.
When Jeremiah told the exiles that God wanted them to live well in Babylon, it wasn’t an instruction to adopt the dis-ease of the Babylonian Empire. God wasn’t telling them to acclimate to the boiling pot into which they’d be thrown.
God was reminding the people that they weren’t soup ingredients—regardless of the pot of their circumstances. They were not celery and onions to be boiled down to taste like the empire. They were not mirepoix for the empire’s richness.
They were milk and honey: the taste of God’s abundance and freedom. They were daily manna in the city: reminders of holy nourishment to a world gorging itself on power and wealth.
They were blessings for the welfare of their community.
Prayer: Most Holy God, do not let me be reduced—not within myself, not within the world—to a morsel in the soup that feeds unjust power and wealth. Let me not be hungry for the meal that seeks to consume me.
cross-posted with the UCC Daily Devotional
Thoughts and Prayers
Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake. – Psalm 79:8-9 (NRSV)
Vague spirituality is common in the wake of public tragedies. Politicians send generic “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of a mass shooting. Pastors add the tragedy of a flood to the endless list of “thoughts and prayers” in the bulletin. Journalists publish analytical “thoughts and prayers” about wildfires and hurricanes and starvation within the rush of a news cycle. Many of us publicize our “thoughts and prayers,” too: Substack essays about whether to mourn or to rage; Facebook posts about whether to set politics aside or to organize with partisan passion; tweets that sympathize and tweets that blame.
Explicitly woven throughout the massive word cloud of so many thoughts and prayers: a cry for compassion.
Implicitly understood in our thoughts and prayers: a certainty that we (collectively) will not be convicted by the iniquities of this tragedy, or the next one, or the next one.
Because vague spirituality prefers not to remember past sins or to contend with present wickedness.
Vague spirituality prays for deliverance from our unresolved histories but not for resolution itself, and certainly not for reparations.
Vague spirituality talks a lot about speedy compassion, in pursuit of shared forgetfulness.
Vague spirituality is Psalm 79:8 without Psalm 79:9—a prayer for relief without a desire for salvation.
Salvation does the hard work of holistic relief, not swept-under-the-rug consolation. Salvation is relief plus remembrance. It is compassion plus reparation. It is grace plus accountability. Salvation is a prayer wed to an ongoing commitment. Salvation is a thought born of disillusionment and confession, enfleshed in grace and humility. Salvation seeks the glory of the holy whole, not the Band-Aid of the few.
Prayer: Forgive me, O God. I have no prayers for the wicked and little hope for their redemption. Turn my thoughts to a holier and whole-ier salvation, for your name’s sake.
cross-published with the UCC Daily Devotional
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