...like mothers do

The Lord is never far away, but through all grief distressing,

An ever-present help and stay, our peace and joy and blessing;

As with a mother’s tender hand He leads His own, His chosen band:

to God all praise and glory.

---Johann Jakob Schutz, 1675

The hardest place in the world to be. Is it stuck in a rip current? At the beginning of a final exam for which you have neglected to properly prepare? Sitting in the doctor’s office and no one will meet your eye? At home watching the clock, waiting for a child out long past curfew, again?

In my experience, the hands-down hardest place in this world to be is alone. Almost anything I can think of can be faced down successfully with an ally beside you. And almost anything can seem insurmountable when you feel that you are facing it by yourself. Jesus himself seemed to understand the human craving for “with-ness”, for his promise recorded in John 14:18 is this: I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

In this text, hymnist Johann Schutz imagined God as ever-present and tenderly guiding as the mother of a toddler, continually offering a hand to steady, to guide, to reassure; never more than an instant away, so that the stresses and dangers of life, its hurts and heartaches, need not be faced alone, but in the loving presence of One who bore us and loves us fiercely. And tenderly. Like mothers do.

And won’t let us go it alone.

...the darkness hide thee

Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide thee,

though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see;

only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,

Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

---Reginald Heber, 1826

It has been a little while (ahem) since I last studied child development, so this week I did a bit of refreshing on the concept of ‘object permanence’. The theory behind object permanence is this: once human comprehension develops to a certain level we can grasp the idea that objects can exist, even when we cannot see them. I was imagining that the age for developing this sense might be a year to 18 months old, and was surprised to find that current research supports a range of three to eight months as the time frame for this understanding to emerge. Imagine how terrifying a game of peekaboo would be for a young child with no sense of object permanence --- when you cover up your face, you are actually gone!

Though we would all agree that God is not object, this hymn suggests that a sense of object permanence is necessary in visioning Godself, individually and as a people. At times both the shadows of this world --- hate, violence, disregard, presumption --- and the shadows of our own souls --- hurt, fear, envy, pain, disappointment --- keep us from laying eyes on the glory, the evidence, of God’s presence with us. None of those shadows, though, none of them, keep the reality of God’s presence from us.

As we, then, whatever our stage of human or divine development, seek a sense of communion with Holiness, may we remember: seen or unseen, hidden or revealed, speaking or silent, God is with us, close as breath, holy.

...breathe in, breathe out

Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure,

Until with Thee I will Thy will,

To do and to endure.

---Edwin Hatch, 1878

There is a holiness about a small child, snuggled under your chin, sleeping soundly. There is a deep, even, peaceful breathing that is like no other sound or sensation on this earth; and before you even realize it, you have fallen under its spell. Your breath pattern speeds or slows, shallows or deepens, and matches the child in your arms. In an elemental way, in that moment, you will what that child wills. A holy moment.

I wonder if perhaps hymnist Edwin Hatch had experienced such a high holy moment, whether he called it to remembrance as he penned these words. Imagine, if you can, matching your breath to the very breath of a living God. Breath that would enliven, empower, inspire, embolden. Breath that would draw you into communion with a God Who has been in love with you since the beginning of time, wanting nothing more than to breath in unison with you. Breath that would fill you like that. I could use some of that.

Breathe on me, Breath of God…

...God in a box

The church of Christ cannot be bound by walls of wood or stone.

Where charity and love are found, there can the church be known.

---Adam M. L. Tice, 2005

When Sarah was a young child, she wore out a CD of kids’ Christian songs---knew every word on every track, and often sang them at the top of her lungs. Lucky for me, the music was fine (mostly) and the theology had some meat on its bones. One of the songs on the CD was ‘If You Tried to Put God in a Box’. The first little bit goes,

            If you tried to put God in a box, how big would the box have to be?

            How strong would you make it? How long would it last

            If you tried to put God in a box?

The answer to this child’s riddle, of course, is that God will not be boxed in by any construction of human hand or mind. The irony, of course, is that we, most of us, spend our lives trying mightily to build that box. And to get our version of a greatly diminished God to jump on in. How foolish, to strive and strive to remake our Maker over in our own image---to fit our box. Ah, but fear not. God has no intention of being confined to any space we can imagine.

Thank God.

And here’s the other thing. The Church? The Body of Christ? We were never meant to be bound by the geometry of the cube. What draws us inward is only to energize and strengthen us to burst every boundary that separates us from a weak and wounded world. What pulls us close is to prepare us to fling light into the shadows and shower love on disregard. Those were never walls---they were bridges, for God’s sake.

Thanks be to you, O God. For you never met a box you didn’t break. Embolden your Church to live/love with the same reckless abandon.