...while we wait

O God in whom all life begins, who births the seed to fruit,

bestow Your blessing on our lives; here let Your love find root.

Bring forth in us the Spirit’s gifts of patience, joy, and peace;

deliver us from numbing fear, and grant our faith increase.

---Carl P. Daw, 1990

The more we learn about gestation and human growth, and germination and plant growth, the more similarities become apparent. So much of early growth happens silent, hidden—good, strong changes taking time and nourishment before new life is ever ready to make an appearance on the scene. And while I’ve never been a farmer, having to depend on invisible growth for the future, I have been a mom, waiting helpless for months on growth beyond my control for my arms to be full. And I know the numbing fear that comes with trusting unseen growth, especially what must be the farmer’s fear after a drought year. I know the mother’s waiting fear after still birth. The breath-held, afraid-to-hope, needing-to-trust, wanting-to-believe fear that growth is happening.

I think other parts of our lives are like that, too. So many characteristics of a faithful life grow unseen, tucked away, nurtured by time and steady attention. The Spirit’s gifts grow in us, perhaps unseen as they germinate, but growing all the same, ready to yield mature aspects of our character that will shape the world around us. Peace, love, joy—powerful forces for transforming life. And the patience to believe that unseen growth will yield a harvest.

May God deliver us from the chokehold of fear into the embrace of faith…while we wait.

...all we thirsted for

All the way my Savior leads me; cheers each winding path I tread,

gives me grace for every trial, feeds me with the living bread;

though my weary steps may falter, and my soul athirst may be,

gushing from the Rock before me, lo! a spring of joy I see.

---Fanny Crosby, 1875

There are times the path seems winding, and the end unseen. At those times, when each step grows heavy, and the way seems never-ending, a hint of breeze refreshes, cheers. A rest along the way, to refuel and rest, can cast the day in a different light.

And when that path is life, and goals are elusive, and progress seems awfully rare, grace is that refreshing—gift, given with no thought of return, or of its having been earned in the first place. The words of our brother Jesus, urging us on toward greater compassion, more tenderness, consistent understanding—these words are food, fuel.

And the very presence of Christ, in the midst of our mess, feet on our path, God with us—this presence is pure joy, springing up like cool spring water, unexpected, thrilling, a little shocking. The very thing we never knew we were thirsty for.

All. the. way.

...what feet are for

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;

oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.

---Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887

Path. Way. Journey. Through the years, these expressions of spiritual life have come to ring truest in my ear, and resonate most soundly in my soul. While I am not always positive about my destination, and my goals change, and sometimes finish lines seem frustratingly movable, feeling called to the journey is a constant. If day breaks, there is a path, and even when I may not be totally sold on the reason, my feet will be on it, because that is what feet, and paths, are for.

In this little bit of late-19^th cent. poetry, the hymnist speaks of the path growing bright from day to day. My mind travels to the memory verse from Bible Drill---“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105) And the thing is, I’ve walked on some dark paths in my life (yep, literal and metaphorical), and I know how lights work. That flashlight? Even a good one, with the batteries you remembered to replace before you packed it up for the campout? It illuminates the path a few steps ahead.

God’s presence? Right there with us on the path, every step of the way. But that light it throws? It’s a flashlight, not a floodlight. We were always meant to walk leaning on God, steps at a time, waiting for the light to shine up ahead.

Wow. Light for the journey, and an arm to lean on. On the path with Jesus.

...holding ourselves hostage

He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free;

His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.

---Charles Wesley, 1739

I have been singing this hymn for most of my life, and other Christians have been singing it since, well, the mid-1700s when Charles Wesley composed the text. You can imagine, then, how surprised I was by something new speaking to me from this page of the hymnal.

I believe most of us are familiar with the idea that Christ’s sacrifice has freed us from, and forgiven us for, our sins. This act of Christ’s has removed the separation between us and God. Look closer with me at the first phrase of the selected verse: He breaks the power of canceled sin. Now I am thinking, what is the power of sin, if it has been canceled by Christ? For me, the power of canceled sin in our lives is guilt, and the inability to really believe in Christ’s power to forgive. With the memory of sin, its shadow, hanging over our heads, we continue to live as sinful, and therefore separated beings.

And friends, living in the shadow of canceled sin, in guilt, is in no way living as free people. In a way, guilt is more of a prison than sin ever was---because, brothers and sisters, we sit in cells with unlocked doors, steadfastly refusing to step out into the freedom of forgiveness. By letting guilt exercise its death-grip on our hearts, we hold ourselves hostage.

But we have a great Redeemer. Our gracious Master has not only broken the power of active sin in our lives, but also the power of canceled sin. We are free from sin…and guilt. We are free.

...welcome, every single one

All who hunger, never strangers, seeker, be a welcome guest.

Come from restlessness and roaming. Here in joy, we keep the feast.

We who once were lost and scattered in communion’s love have stood.

Taste and see the grace eternal. Taste and see that God is good.

---Sylvia Dunstan, 1990

Sylvia Dunstan, the writer of the hymn text for today’s meditation, spent the major portion of her cancer-shortened ministry as a prison chaplain. All along, until her death at 38, she wrote hymns of profound wisdom, celebrating the mystery of God and the welcome of God’s love. In this text, it seems evident that Dunstan’s decade in ministry to those imprisoned has informed her sense of the isolation and rootlessness experienced by so many on the fringes of society. Hungry, strangers, restless, roaming, lost, scattered (and in other verses wandering, empty, lonely, longing). Some in this population have alienated themselves from the mainstream of society, and others have been cast out by the mainstream. Obviously, Dunstan’s heart was for the castoff and cast out; there is pretty good evidence that God’s heart is, too.

If I’m honest today, the words Dunstan chose to relate the alienation from the ‘center’ are feelings I have felt from time to time. How about you? Who hasn’t wandered, felt empty, restless, lonely? Who hasn’t longed for…well, for something more than this?

Here, Dunstan says, here is the table, and we, all of us, all of them, are welcome. Every single one. And there is grace, starting now, overflowing and lasting forever. Enough for all of us, all of them. Everyone together.

Taste and see.