Thursday, February 10, 2022                                    (today’s lectionary)
The long practice of lament
At the Chinese buffet Jim chose for his birthday lunch, he said to me, “I have regrets, 73 years’ worth of regrets. Many I’ve been freed from, but others hang on. I dream, or I ask for forgiveness, but they won’t go away. I wonder why?”
I said something like, “For me it doesn’t matter whether my regrets wither away or hang on and bother me forever. They are not as real as the fact that from the day I was born, all my life’s purpose was accomplished. There was nothing I could do to make God love me more, just as there was nothing I could do to make God love me less.”
Jim looked a little stunned. “I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”
Of course the trick is to turn that easy-to-say Christianese into emotional truth. Its spiritual truth might be without question, but still … why don’t I believe those words, and then in believing, trust myself and the world around me to God? Our future is secure.
But my emotions of insecurity and fear are real, too. For this reason the bible instructs me in the long practice of lament, a way to express grief and regret, and it does not insist on a timetable for how long that grieving should last before I get back to the sunny side of life.
When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the Lord, his God, as the heart of his father David had been.
Regret, oh yes. Solomon wrote on into the night. “Meaningless, meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” Solomon might have been caught in the web of his desires, but he saw out from the web that God gazed at him with disappointment, and so he saw himself too, from that point of view.
But he did not see everything God saw; Solomon was a man, not a god. He saw God’s disappointment, but he missed seeing the confidence God had in his own creation, no matter whether Solomon lived up to that confidence.
I will deprive you of the kingdom … I will not do this during your lifetime, however … nor will I take away the whole kingdom. I will leave your son one tribe of the twelve.
In his time Solomon got a lot of press. He married many beautiful women from around the world. Things got out of hand.
They mingled with the nations and learned their works. They served their idols, which became a snare for them. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Why should I remember you? What have you ever done for me?
But God does not speak like that, because he does not think like that. “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
We ate our fill of the beautiful, bountiful buffet. Jim said, “The food is tastier than it was when we came before.”
“As far as the east is from the west, as far as sunrise is from sunset, so far has he separated us from our sins.” We are not attacked, we are not accused, we are not condemned by the One who made us. Satan is wrong, he has always been wrong; we are not lost. And each day, the food is tastier than before.
Jesus said to the woman, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”
This woman did not claim her right NOT to be a dog. She did not slap Jesus in the face for the insult. She looked him in the eyes and spoke softly to him out of her mother’s love.
Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.
He looked at her, surprised. The food of God’s healing was tastier than ever.
And he said to the Greek woman, “You may go. The demon has left your daughter. And when the woman came home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Do not be afraid. Perfect love casts out fear.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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