...my kind of river

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,

Over all victorious in it’s bright increase;

Perfect, yet it floweth fuller everyday,

Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

---Frances Havergal, 1874

I have never floated on the Mississippi River, but I’ve read Huckleberry Finn. There is a vivid description of the river that stays with me. Huck and Jim are floating on their raft down the river, intending to veer into the Ohio where it joins the Mississippi. Neither has ever seen the Ohio, or that part of the Mississippi; when they realized that the time for paddling hard upstream of the Ohio was nigh, it was obvious that the river was too wide, too deep, too inexorable to fight against.

I thought of this passage when I read the hymn text for today. This river of God’s peace is no shallow, meandering, drought-sickened rivulet. This river, this peace, is a powerful force, growing deeper and fuller in its completeness. This peace is not a resigned, mousy resignation to the ‘true’ powers in the world. It is the force that is able to sustain life, overpowering the unrest in the world with its current. This peace is the true force to be reckoned with.

That’s my kind of river.

...a little bit of a mess

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden, lost and ruined by the fall;

If you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.

Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;

All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him.

---Joseph Hart, 1759

I have never had a maid or cleaning service (visit my house and you’ll know it!), but I have heard several folks speak of “cleaning up for the maid to come”. It always makes me smile a little, but I sort of know the impulse. Maybe it is the same urge that overcomes folks with disorganized piles of random receipts just before they meet with their accountants. There is something in us that will admit we are needy, but not too needy. We need Jesus’ salvation and life-changing power, but we don’t want to need it too much. Sure, we’re sinners, but not sinners.

This hymn, one of my favorites from that era (1800’s American), reminds me all the time that I need Jesus, and that if I wait around to acknowledge my need till I’m more worthy of Christ’s attention, time will pass, and I may never approach the intimacy with God that Jesus offers me. I need not dream of fitness; Jesus is ready to accept me as I am…poor…needy…ready.

...doesn't love a wall

Nothing in height or in depth
which befriends or befalls us,
nothing in life or death
which forbids or forestalls us,
nothing can limit the love of our saviour, Jesus.
---John L. Bell, 1998

 "You must be this tall to ride this ride." "You must be born after this date to _______ (play in this league, enter kindergarten, see this movie, buy beer)." "Sale price: $2.99. Limit 4." "Whites only."

Oh, we humans love our limits. We love to put them on others --- what are rules, really, but limits imposed on society? Sometimes with good reason, sometimes for no discernible reason at all, we hem others in with lists of rules --- the 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots' (we especially love the 'thou shalt nots'!) --- like bright strings of barbed wire keeping cattle contained in a field.

The funny thing is, we also seem to like to set limits on ourselves, or to let someone else set them for us. If there are no rules, we would have to invent some. Something about staring out across that open prairie scares the daylights out of us. Like the neighbor in Robert Frost's Mending Wall, we murmur under our breath, "Good fences make good neighbors," and keep on stacking stones to divide us from limitlessness.

Because it is our way, then, to set limits, we fail at comprehending a limitless God. Because it is our way, we spend our energy stacking stones at what we perceive to be the limits of God's powerful love. "Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors." We spend our waking hours stringing glinting, razor-sharp barbed-wire at the edge of our conception of the limits of God's mercy.

And all the while, God stands, smiling, one step over the fence. One step beyond our limits. Because nothing can separate us.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

...if only God would speak

God is calling through the voices of our neighbors’ urgent prayers:

Through their longing for redemption and for rescue from despair.

Place of hurt or face of needing; strident cry or silent pleading:

God is calling --- can you hear? 

---Mary Louise Bringle, 2003

“Oh, how I would like to hear God speak clearly!” “I’m just waiting on a sign from God.” “It would have been so much easier to live in Jesus’ time --- we could hear straight from his lips what he wanted from us!” If you have not been the speaker of one of these comments (or something similar), you have surely heard folk who have said these things. If only God would speak, and tell us exactly what we need to know!

In this very new hymn, Mel Bringle posits that God is speaking to us in our modern age. God is speaking through the natural beauty of the world, through music and art, through hymns and carols. She also states that God is speaking to us, pleading, in the voices of those with needs and hungers living among us. God speaks to us in the tragedies and injustices of the world in which we live.

Jesus even addressed this kind of God-speak in Matthew 25. The ‘church people’ asked him, incredulous, “When in the world did we ever hear your voice, Jesus, calling out to us in need or pain?” And Jesus said, “Anytime you heard the cry of your fellow humans, of basic needs, of care and concern, of human dignity, that voice was mine.”

God is calling.

...winter's clear anatomy

I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive.
Winter the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.
---Roy Campbell

If you look out any window where you chance to be right now, odds are you'll see them. Tree skeletons. Tall ones, narrow as rails. Squat ones, bones a tangled mess. Huge ancient ones, central trunks it would take two of us, three, to embrace, with tired arms nearly sweeping the ground, full of stick bundles long abandoned for cozier, deeper climes. Looking, for all the world, like death. No life here, not in these bones.

But we know. We, who've been around the sun a few times ourselves. We know there is life in those dead-looking tree skeletons. We know they are resting, for a season. Waiting. We know that to count them out now, because they look done, finished, over, would be a grand mistake. We know the purest sort of life is hidden in that bareness, waiting for its time. Distilling, concentrating, becoming more itself, more true, the life waits.

Don't discount the bare trees of winter.

...no such thing as an Incredible Hulk for Jesus

Be strong in the Lord, and be of good courage;

Your mighty Defender is always the same.

Mount up with wings as the eagle ascending;

Victory is sure when you call on His name.

---Linda Lee Johnson, 1979

Be strong. In January, it’s hard to get away from this message. Fitness equipment that some well-meaning soul gifted for Christmas cries to us petulantly from the box. TV commercials for decadent football playoff snack spreads battle for air time with ads for gyms and P90X, whatever that is. And you’d better get with the program quick, before the last of your resolution withers away in the cold grey light of February. Be strong.

And when people say to ‘be strong in the Lord’, we are tempted to think of the same process; some sort of spiritual calisthenics, some program we can work, to ‘bulk up’ spiritually to live and serve in a way pleasing to God. Like there is such a thing as an Incredible Hulk for Jesus.

But instead, we are given here the image of an eagle, a mighty and powerful bird, strong for sure. Isaiah used the soaring eagle as a symbol of those whose strength is renewed by God. The thing is, while the eagle covers great distances at a time, it doesn’t do it by flapping its powerful wings. It catches currents of warm rising air called thermals, and glides, even soars, to great heights and for great distances, without exhausting its own finite stores of power. The eagle’s strength comes from relying on thermals to carry it.

Where does your strength come from?

...the tweetable moment

As they offered gifts most rare at thy manger, rude and bare,
so may we with holy joy, pure and free from sin's alloy,
all out costliest treasures  bring, Christ, to thee, our heavenly King.
---William Chatterton Dix, c. 1858

Oprah calls it a "tweetable moment". Before Twitter took off, she called it an "aha moment", but natch --- one must keep up with the times. These are phrases used to refer to epiphanies --- manifestations, sudden revealings, inspired discoveries. "God moments", if you will.

And today, on the spiritual calendar, is Epiphany, traditionally celebrated as the revealing of God in Jesus to the Gentiles. We mark the day remembering the arrival of the Magi, scholars from the East seeking a king and finding a child. They brought gifts, traditionally honoring king, God, and sacrifice. In a very obvious way, what was revealed to them changed them.

Our question today, on this Epiphany, is: Will this revealing, this manifestation, this discovery of God in human form change us? Will it bring us to our knees in wonder? Will it, quite literally, floor us?

And, if it does, what will we bring? Gold, frankinscense (whatever that is), and myrrh are soooo taken; and I've got an inkling they'd be hard for the average Jill and Joe to get our hands on. What, then, are our costliest treasures? What is it we hold back in our private reserve for that special occasion that never seems to happen? What is it that is our 'precious', guarded jealously, beyond reason?

What is it we need to offer the Child, in order to be free to serve the world for His sake?

...the call of creation

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays,

stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise.

Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea,

singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

---Henry van Dyke, 1907

Are you a nature lover? Does the glimpse of a backyard hawk, or stone-still owl, or the earth-tone glint of a speckled trout give you pause? Do you climb the mountain because it’s there? Does your heart beat in rhythm with the tide lapping a beach of pure white or coal-black sand? Have you met the steady gaze of a deer at the edge of the wood, and stood, just so, sharing the moment? Do you step out your door on certain days --- those perfect days --- breathe in deeply, and pray a silent “Yes”?

Me, too. And I believe, from the depth of my being, that what we feel in such moments is the call of God’s creation to come away --- to remember the Creator of all this goodness, and us. And to breathe the profound prayer of those who stop to notice; the prayer of thanks and praise.

Both earth and heaven reflect the light of their Creator. And we praise, as blessed witnesses.