Thursday, July 24, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Cloud of witness
The Lord told Moses, “Make the people wash their garments and be ready for the third day.”
None of the people could hear or see Yahweh, except Moses. This was a tender mercy on God’s part. But God was about to make an exception.
“I am coming to you in a dense cloud, and the people will hear me speaking with you.”
Then on the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud, and a very loud trumpet blast. Mount Sinai was all wrapped in smoke, for the Lord came down upon it in fire. Smoke rose up from it and the whole mountain trembled violently.
This trumpet was not a ram’s horn shofar, nor was it Louis Armstrong’s cornet. This blast did not sound like reveille or taps or the Kentucky Derby’s Call to the Post. And this blast did not stop. Imagine how deafening it was in the fiery morning of this the third day. Who could hear herself think? Who could even imagine what Moses was saying? But God … Yahweh … Jehovah assured his people that he was there, and he would not be silent.
The trumpet blast grew louder and louder. Moses was speaking, and God answered him with thunder.
Could this have been the mountain where Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus to meet Moses and Elijah in what we call the Transfiguration, where the disciples were dumbfounded by the greeting Jesus received? Peter’s terrified confusion, and the shock and awe of a million Israelites, force us to our knees if we close our eyes and imagine being there.
But this was not a military meeting. No guns were drawn, no arrows slotted into bowstrings, and there’s no record of anyone injured, let alone killed. Not even a ruptured eardrum. This is just what happens when God’s finger touches earth. God’s grace terrifies me. I shake in my shoes. For a second my sinner’s eyes catch a tiny glimpse of what was “in the beginning, is now and ever shall be” – the glory of God.
This meeting might not be military, but it changes how we see everything. Nothing about my life can be taken for granted. For decades I’ve claimed the classic “sinner saved by grace-ness,” but now this Christian cliché bursts out of its boring bonds.
Here are a few thoughts from Richard Giannone about sin and grace, referring to fiction from Flannery O’Connor.
The author of Wise Blood (Flannery O’Connor), like the apostle Paul, believes that to belong to the world means to be a sinner, a participant in sin and a recipient of its judgment. The world and sin coincide. Sin cannot be understood merely as an individual act, but as the condition in which one shares. Before Hazel Motes in Wise Blood can turn around to follow the bedraggled Jesus into the precarious unknown of faith, he must first pass through the cozy dark of the nihilism that he professes. (p. 15, Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Love)
Grace in O’Connor’s art, constitutes an event. Redeeming action enters into the life of her characters through a consciousness of guilt, an understanding that as a sinner one participates in God’s mercy. The sign of grace accepted is a soft openness of feeling, a compunction, that leads the character into a gracious disposition of generosity toward self and others. The sign of grace refused is either a denial of guilt or a submersion in punishment without end or cause. Both kinds of refusals stem from dejection (acedia, depression, despair).
Each rejection of grace deepens the pleasurelessness it was meant to dispel … the sorrowful mystery of dejection (not one of the Rosary’s) reminds us that the experience basic to life and goodness is joy. Long-faced remorse breeds despondency, depresses the spirit.
The daily excuse, the unadmitted dejection that passes for ordinary existence is an evasion of transcendence. Our duty is to enjoy (give joy to someone or something). This is the most useful thing we can do, for it points the way out of self-destruction toward goodness. (Mystery of Love, pp 54, 68-69)
Can I get a witness?
(Exodus 19, Daniel 3, Matthew 11, Matthew 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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