This may be one of many ways to describe the relationship between human beings and God. We are chronically anxious and God is chronically loving.
You can find this theme reoccurring over and over again throughout the Bible. Adam and Eve are anxious to know what it is like to “know like God” (Genesis 3). Abraham and Sarah are anxious about waiting on God’s timing (Genesis 16). Moses is anxious about answering God’s call (Exodus 4). Israel is anxious about starving in the wilderness and being destroyed by their enemies (Numbers 14). Martha is anxious about many things (Luke 10).
In every case, God meets our chronic anxiety with chronic love.
This description of God is a regular refrain throughout the Bible:
“God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient – so much love, so deeply true – loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.” Exodus 34:6-7
I’ve been asked, “But what about when someone is being abusive?” A common way of coping with our anxiety is to be actively and passively aggressive. How do we love someone that is abusive? Do we stay and “take it”? Do we dish it back? Do we leave?
God told the Israelites to flee the slavery of the Egyptian Pharaoh rather than stay there and remain a less-than-human, corporate punching bag. God had better plans for them than to be enslaved. Pharaoh would need to figure out how to make money without abusing Israel. Pharaoh wouldn’t figure out how to do that unless Israel said, “I’m not going to be your punching bag anymore.” In this case leaving was loving. In many ways, it would have been easier for Israel to stay than to go. To go . . it took great courage. It took great faith. It took being in community. It took God. Interesting.
This is why we cannot say that separation and divorce are always wrong and unloving. To be sure, separation and divorce are not good if they are the easy way for us to avoid responsibility for our own habits, hurts and hang ups. Every effort must be made to work on our own stuff through counseling and prayer. Avoiding responsibility is not a loving thing to do. Sadly, some folks are avoiding responsibility by getting separated and divorced. And ironically, there are some folks who are helping their spouse avoid responsibility for their abusive behavior by refusing to consider a separation or divorce, even after living in an abusive relationship for years. This is because they can’t imagine that leaving would ever be loving. But here is the deal: Pharaoh isn’t going to find a new economy unless Israel leaves!
God is the same way with us. God will not allow us to make God into whatever we want. When we try and turn God into a genie-type wish dispenser, God will have nothing of it. God isn’t a smorgasbord for us to pick and choose what we like and leave the rest. God says, “Follow me.” “Worship God alone.” This effects everything else on our “to do” list because, as my friend Aaron Rousseau likes to say, God is our “to do” list. God won’t let us use God as a punching bag to avoid responsibility for our hurt, habits and hang ups either.
Even on the cross, when it appeared that God was letting us have our way with God, God was having God’s way with us! The suffering of God exposes our sin and God’s love. The cross is the place where our chronic anxiety and God’s chronic love intersect. It is the place where God leaves us (“my God, my God why have you forsaken me”), the place where God stays with us (“father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing”) and the place where God dishes it back (“here is your son, here is your mother.”)
God has not allowed us to have our way with God ultimately. God has refused to go looking for another spouse. And God has given us back a new way of relating to one another, a new understanding of being sons and daughters, husbands and wives.
It’s nothing short of freedom, redemption, and new creation when God’s chronic love meets our chronic anxiety.
Questions for reflection:
Is there someone or someplace you want to leave in order to avoid responsibility?
How would knowing a “God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient – so much love, so deeply true” help you stay and take responsibility for your own behavior in this situation?
Do you know anyone who lives with someone who has an addiction and is abusive? What makes it hard to leave these relationships? How does the story of Israel and Pharaoh speak to you? Can “leaving be loving?” Why or why not?
Have you ever tried “playing Pharaoh” with God or another person – trying to use God or someone else for your own purposes? How has God or that person shown you that He will not be controlled/enslaved by you?
Pray for people with addictions and those living in abusive relationships.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Relay for Life Lake Nona Sunrise Devotion
The images of darkness and light are so significant during this Relay for Life Event.
Here we use Darkness and Light to help us to tell our story.
Everyone who gathers here is touched by the disease of Cancer in some way. Like a thief in the night, cancer has robbed us and those we love from the life we want to live. When we think of cancer – we appropriately think of DARKNESS.
And while that darkness of cancer is real. The light tells us it is not all that is real. More than once I've heard people with cancer say, “I am more than a diagnosis. I am more than this disease.” That’s not a denial of the darkness. It is simply to say, “Darkness isn’t the only part of our story.” The light reminds us that there are survivors of cancer because of research, medicines, treatments, and communities that have pushed back on the darkness. When we think of those survivors and hope for a cure – we appropriately think of LIGHT.
So during this event, we once again tell the story of CANCER and CURE with the images of DARKNESS and LIGHT.
This is not unique or new with Relay for Life. The ancient words of the Bible show that these images of DARKNESS and LIGHT are really as old as creation. And they not only tell OUR story, they tell GOD’S story.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and DARKNESS covered the face of the deep . . . Then God said, “Let there be LIGHT” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:1-5
Some things to notice about this:
1. God did not create darkness, yet God works in it.
2. God created light with his word.
3. God did this on the first day of creation.
What I find so amazing about God is that God takes what He is given – even something like DARKNESS and makes it into something that serves HIS WILL. God did this from the beginning, on the first day of creation, when he created LIGHT and mixed it in with the DARKNESS that was already there.
In paring Light with Darkness, God created the beautiful rhythm of Day and Night which are vital to God’s design for creating and sustaining life.
Interestingly, in God’s hands, darkness becomes something beautiful.
In darkness, we are conceived in our mother’s womb, we find rest and sleep, we grow, we heal and we are restored. All things that we need.
In darkness, we must remember, God is at work too.
Eugene Petersen reminds us that God’s day begins at Sundown. When we are winding down and preparing to rest, God is just getting started . . . right there in darkness.
God speaks to us about this through the prophet Isaiah when he says:
“I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by name.”
Isaiah 45:3
By walking through the night during this Relay for Life we, perhaps unknowingly, have been saying something about how beautifully God works in darkness.
The words of the Easter story in John’s gospel echo in my ears when I think about how God works in darkness.
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” John 20:1
I love how John’s gospel echoes the Creation story in Genesis.
Here, we have God at work once again on the FIRST DAY – this time it is the FIRST DAY OF NEW CREATION! And notice once again, God is at work WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK.
Mary was walking in the dark toward Jesus’ tomb, expecting to find a dead body. She did not realize at all that God had been busy at work there in the darkness!
What we know that Mary didn’t know is that WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK, Jesus, the Light of the World, rose from the dead!
I don’t know of better news for people who find themselves walking through the darkest valley’s of cancer, mental illness, drug addiction, anxiety and uncertainty. While it was still dark, when we didn’t have a clue, when we were expecting to find death at best . . . God is at work rising the dead.
This is God’s story and our story: The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
How the Light Comes:
A Blessing for Christmas Day – Rev. Jan Richardson www.janrichardson.com
I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
Here we use Darkness and Light to help us to tell our story.
Everyone who gathers here is touched by the disease of Cancer in some way. Like a thief in the night, cancer has robbed us and those we love from the life we want to live. When we think of cancer – we appropriately think of DARKNESS.
And while that darkness of cancer is real. The light tells us it is not all that is real. More than once I've heard people with cancer say, “I am more than a diagnosis. I am more than this disease.” That’s not a denial of the darkness. It is simply to say, “Darkness isn’t the only part of our story.” The light reminds us that there are survivors of cancer because of research, medicines, treatments, and communities that have pushed back on the darkness. When we think of those survivors and hope for a cure – we appropriately think of LIGHT.
So during this event, we once again tell the story of CANCER and CURE with the images of DARKNESS and LIGHT.
This is not unique or new with Relay for Life. The ancient words of the Bible show that these images of DARKNESS and LIGHT are really as old as creation. And they not only tell OUR story, they tell GOD’S story.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and DARKNESS covered the face of the deep . . . Then God said, “Let there be LIGHT” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:1-5
Some things to notice about this:
1. God did not create darkness, yet God works in it.
2. God created light with his word.
3. God did this on the first day of creation.
What I find so amazing about God is that God takes what He is given – even something like DARKNESS and makes it into something that serves HIS WILL. God did this from the beginning, on the first day of creation, when he created LIGHT and mixed it in with the DARKNESS that was already there.
In paring Light with Darkness, God created the beautiful rhythm of Day and Night which are vital to God’s design for creating and sustaining life.
Interestingly, in God’s hands, darkness becomes something beautiful.
In darkness, we are conceived in our mother’s womb, we find rest and sleep, we grow, we heal and we are restored. All things that we need.
In darkness, we must remember, God is at work too.
Eugene Petersen reminds us that God’s day begins at Sundown. When we are winding down and preparing to rest, God is just getting started . . . right there in darkness.
God speaks to us about this through the prophet Isaiah when he says:
“I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by name.”
Isaiah 45:3
By walking through the night during this Relay for Life we, perhaps unknowingly, have been saying something about how beautifully God works in darkness.
The words of the Easter story in John’s gospel echo in my ears when I think about how God works in darkness.
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” John 20:1
I love how John’s gospel echoes the Creation story in Genesis.
Here, we have God at work once again on the FIRST DAY – this time it is the FIRST DAY OF NEW CREATION! And notice once again, God is at work WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK.
Mary was walking in the dark toward Jesus’ tomb, expecting to find a dead body. She did not realize at all that God had been busy at work there in the darkness!
What we know that Mary didn’t know is that WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK, Jesus, the Light of the World, rose from the dead!
I don’t know of better news for people who find themselves walking through the darkest valley’s of cancer, mental illness, drug addiction, anxiety and uncertainty. While it was still dark, when we didn’t have a clue, when we were expecting to find death at best . . . God is at work rising the dead.
This is God’s story and our story: The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
How the Light Comes:
A Blessing for Christmas Day – Rev. Jan Richardson www.janrichardson.com
I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
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