(The flood in your life may not be literal, but many of us are feeling overwhelmed in some way today. Keep going.)
The things we witness in a lifetime
the experiences we never imagine
could become ours for we are
too smart too smug too gifted
why it’s outside our experience
so it must not be possible
it will never happen to us...
But... it will in this world
where there are
none good but God
and God is often silent and we
sit and wait for our salvation
Oh yes it will
For we have misunderstood the way
this life can be and have listened to
preachers of easy religion and prophets
of consumerism and others who ignore
the truth that “the sun rises on the evil
and the good and the rain falls on the just
and the unjust” no matter your tribe
This life visited by the power of mystery and
randomness and random sin and the cumulative
power of our decisions and those of others
some of whom we will never meet and some who
have taken this life and its purposes far too casually
and the great unstoppable currents of nature too
And so ...
We submit to the flood or we band together
in humility and trust and stand against the dark
and shine the light of love and go and do our
best to be the lens of God’s fierce healing and
God’s mind and heart and hands and feet and
pocketbook at work in unifying love, God doing God’s
redemption thing for us and with us and in us and
through us and even if we fail it will only be for
a season for our end game is secure for nothing
can overcome the love of God and God’s best
and final intentions for God’s children, and
that is all of us.
The floods of this life, real or metaphorical, never get the last word.
The last word belongs to the Word and the Word is Light
and the darkness can never overcome this Light,
this Love of God, creative pronouncement that holds
us close in the heart of God and drenches us with grace
and hope and, finally, peace, not like the world gives
but the transcendent peace of God.
Keep going. Fear not.
Stand, resist, and sing — Hallelujah.
Grace and peace,
Bob Guffey
(-2 Corinthians 4:1, 12)