C-19 Reflections #1: Working With What We’ve Got
Daily C19 Reflections: “Working with What We’ve Got” (#1 )
Scripture Reading:
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (1 Thessalonians 4:9-12)
Dear Friends,
My wife and a few of my dearest friends challenged me to consider taking thisproject on when quite independently of each other they suggested that I do somedaily writing as a way to connect with people during these unusual and unprecedented times.
I had already been planning to write something on a weekly basis for our church in place of the Sunday sermon, but it grew into something quite a bit more. While in some ways I understand the invitation and the confidence placed in me, unlike previous times when I have written quite purposefully for my church community and other friends during a specific season, I find this particular task to be quite daunting, simply because like so many pastors who are feeling the pressure to say something profound and prophetic just now, I find myself sheepishly admitting that I don't really know exactly what to say as I join you in watching this whole crisis unfold. I have shared in your shock and numbness and I have been stuck in the questions these last several days with little direction forward.
In addition, unlike my previous attempts, I don't have a clear pathway or guiding theme, except for a few emerging inklings and impressions. But I believe in the power of invitations and recognize that invitations are a way that God uses to get us moving along into something we should be doing but can't seem to get to on our own. So here I am with a commitment to write something which is meant to be prayerfully connected to a scripture for the sake of our daily lives as we are experiencing them particularly just now in all their disturbing and destabilizing vulnerability.
And so with these realities in mind, these reflective offerings will be modest and limited in scope, mundane and simple more than philosophical and complex, daily more than definitive. They are not sermons or lectures or bible studies. They will not over explain or instruct. They will not make cheap promises. They will not be critical, judgemental or political. They will simply be me being me trying to live in the Spirit and in scripture, in my home, on my street, in my chair, at my my desk, on my walks, in our church, in my larger community of my friends, family and contacts, in my connections and conversations with people, all mixed together in my quiet ongoing engagement with the bigger, deeper pictures.
If my description to these reflections seems to be lacking a little bit of ambition and sizzle so be it. This doesn't seem to be an especially ambitious season except for our deep concern and care for the sick and the dying, the shut in, the people who care for them directly as well as our commitment to participate together in responding to the spreading threat through the worldwide effort of politician by politician, business by business, scientist by scientist, community by community, home by home, prayer by prayer. But while we are ambitious for these crucial concerns, in between the lines many of use feel quite confused, overwhelmed, discouraged and even useless by the present reality and the troubling uncertainly to come.
A few weeks ago, before things got crazy, when you could still share a coffee and croissant together in a bakery, I was talking to a friend who has gone through as horrendous a personal story as I have been acquainted with in a long time. In the middle of the conversation describing something of their approach to things, my friend said to me, "All I'm doing is working with what I've got." A bit later, I told my friend how important I felt that quote was going to be for me and I have been reflecting on it and sharing it with others quite a bit since. But I had no idea that I would be writing for a people in a certain time who find themselves along with me all trying to just think, pray, live, work and even survive with what we've gotright in front of us!
In today's passage the apostle invites us to a certain kind of ambition rooted in simplequiet community living marked by daily physical activity in the clear view of other people – what an unusual way to think and speak to people about being ambitious! Most of you are probably thinking, what choice do we have other than this just now, limited as we are to our homes and basic lives? But maybe this reality helps you to try to be open,as much as the apostle's invitation ignites in you, to one fascinating dynamic going on here just below the surface of these troubling times. That somehow in the mix of our forced simplicity and day to day humanity, God is working to connect with other people precisely because of the way we choose to respond to the call of the daily rhythms we are being invited to. So in the middle of this crazy, unusual season, maybe we work away on the adventure of seeing how God's ambitious desire to connect with others might be working its way though the very basic shutdown lives many of us are presently learning to despise.
If all we have to work with is keeping in touch with people, feeding the birds, walking the dog, shopping for the staples, eating together more often, reading more, cleaning out the storage space, sharing stories, creatively programming the family schedule, effectively integrating professional work responsibilities with home life, learning to dance and single with people all over, going to church virtually, offering to help, playing games and making videos, watching the news, and keeping our health care servants, our societal and spiritual leaders and the people of world in prayer, then maybe somewhere in the midst of this way of living and all the implications, big or small, present and future, frustrating and surprising, just maybe in this particular season God is inviting us to notice and name his mysterious presence as we participate in what he is doing through us rightin the time and place where we find ourselves and simply working with what we have been given, as crazy as that sounds.
