English teacher Todd Hague of Tyler, TX began his meditations on All Saints Day with the confession that he experienced a lot of suffering in the preceding 12 months. With that in mind, I was drawn to comfort he finds in harsh sayings:
- The raging seas that cover the earth symbolize chaos in Sirach 43.23, but "the Lord places islands in it." Hague says friends and church can be "islands" in our lives.
- "Sometimes guilt is like a physical malady," Hague writes, and the nightmares in Revelation can help us stay awake (Rev 16.15) to "keep watch over our thoughts, intentions, and actions."
- Anyone unwilling to work should not eat is tough love from Paul (2 Thess 3.10-11) also proclaimed to the upper-class idlers at Jamestown. (For middle schoolers, I called it "the thesis sentence for America.") Hague finds its spiritual application:"when fulfillment comes too easily, it sours...Empty pleasures that require nothing of us fail to feed us."
- When Paul seems harsh, Hague remembers that "much of Paul's ministry involved breaking through old centers of tribalism and traditions." Hague admits, "I have very little in common with many people in my congregation... But we kneel at the same communion rail and confess our sins to the same Christ."
- Zebedee was probably dismayed when his sons James and John left him in his fishing boat literally holding the bag: there went all of his expectations for the future. Hague asks, "What expectations can you let die so that you might live more fully in Christ?"
- Psalm 102.2-4 expresses misery, My days drift by like smoke, but Hague offers an image from cowboy author Louis L'amour's book of poetry Smoke from this Altar. A lone figure sits at a campfire under the stars, smoke rising. For L'amour, it's an image of prayer.
Schisler remembers "The Devil made me do it," a catch phrase for comedian Flip Wilson. But "no one's laughing" when Satan enters Judas, who then betrays Jesus. Rage is one reaction to betrayal, but Psalm 37.9, appointed for that same day, reminds us, "rage... leads only to evil." Schisler recommends we get help with our feelings of anger and "set small goals" for dealing with our sense of powerlessness. (I'd just had a financial setback; a small goal to save just $60 a week helped me to regain a sense of security.)
The small blossoms on a fig tree are signs of the coming of spring, Jesus observes. Schisler reminds us how our "smallest actions" can be signs of God's love for others.
In a couple of scriptures, Schisler simply warns us that these aren't just stories of the past.
- 2 Peter 2.19 people are slaves to whatever masters them goes with the scientific conclusion that we're "wired" for addiction. Schisler cites addictions to work, shopping, and various substances, and I recognize myself and people close to me in that list.
- We can't take comfort in the fact that Herod's slaughter of the Holy Innocents was long ago: "There are many ways to kill our children," Schisler cautions.
New things I now declare (Is 42.9) puts Lui in mind of the "quirks and different perspectives" her church members "bring to the shared table." We're not to pretend we don't see those differences, but are to allow love to supersede them. Likewise, Eph 4.9 gives us Paul imprisoned telling us that "captivity is captive." We can't pretend not to suffer, she says, but pain and loss do not have to "define our lives."
Rabbis gave Lui some insights. When God asks Cain what's happened to Abel, Cain answers sarcastically, "Am I my brother's keeper?" One Rabbi said that all of scripture and the rabbinic tradition can be summed up in God's unspoken response: Yes, you are your brother's keeper. Another Rabbi told her that we should carry two slips of paper with us at all times, a different message on each: the world was created for me and I am but ashes and dust. "Wisdom," he told her, "is learning when to read which slip of paper."
Lui tells how she suddenly heard familiar scriptures in new ways. God shall give you your heart's desires (Ps 37.4) sounded to her like a promise to give her stuff; with a shift in emphasis, it means that God will let her know what her heart truly desires. That saying by Jesus that only those who do God's will are his brother and sister and mother sounded like he's disowning his family; Lui takes it as an opening to imagine God the Father as also God the Mother, the Sister, the Brother -- and she challenges us to begin our prayers to God from those different angles.
Lui recounts times when disciples do not recognize Jesus until he makes a small word or gesture: walking on water unrecognized, he tells them not to be afraid; mistaken for the gardener, he simply says Mary's name; at Emmaus, he breaks the bread to share it. Lui concludes,
Where might you be overlooking Jesus in your life? Saint Benedict reminds us to welcome every stranger as Christ himself. At every turn, it is a small intimate action that only Jesus would know that reveals God to us: the breaking of bread with our community, the quiet reassurance to take heart even in times of trouble, the quiet whisper of our own name.
A line from Gal 4.9 about coming to know God [and] to be known by God recognizes that we are works in process. By coincidence, I read that just after I'd run across an analogy by crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers (friend of C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien), who sees similarity between God's relationship to us and her relationship to the characters in her novels: they exist solely by and through her, yet her intentions for them change as they develop through their stories. Lui writes a reassurance that must be especially welcome to adolescents, "God delights when we grow and change into more of who we were created to be."
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