Saturday May 13, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Miracles, Macedonia and mothers
Remember the word I spoke to you, “No slave is greater than his master.”
In other words, if I act humbly and in support of others, you have no right to refuse to do the same. If I wash your feet, you will want to wash the feet of others.
And when you do … when I do … I become less full of my own thinking and plans. I can listen better, especially listen better to God.
They tried to go on into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. During the night Paul had a vision. A Macedonian implored him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” And so we sought passage to Macedonia at once, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the Good News to them.
Often miracles of healing accompany preaching where the Gospel is a new thing. Words from God count as miracles too, I think. But also Paul and Timothy’s ears were open, unblocked by skepticism or disbelief. Not only that, their obedience to each other and to God cleaned their ears out completely.
They could hear a pin drop in heaven.
On account of the Jews in that region, Paul had Timothy circumcised, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
Timothy agreed to be circumcised, because he was Jesus’ servant, Paul’s servant, and the servant of the Jews they would be preaching to. Paul probably learned as much from Timothy as he taught Timothy. Somewhere along the way Timothy learned to be humble and obedient. He learned to wash the feet of others. And from Paul he learned to listen as he prayed.
Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life that gives you freedom to go and to stay where you wish, to find the many signs that point out the way to a new land. Praying is living. In the end, a life of prayer is a life with open hands—a life where we need not be ashamed of our weaknesses but realize that it is more perfect for us to be led by the Other than to try to hold everything in our own hands. (Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved)
I’m thinking about mothers, mothers and their prayers, and their own educations in humility and obedience.. Margaret has spent much of her life washing feet. She spent hours and then days and then, worst of all, nights, dealing with Chris’ colic when he was not yet a family minister at a big church in Springfield. She knew the ins and outs of Marc’s need for movement and intense desire to be held and comforted, all at the same time in an unmapped region of their life together. And Margaret knew how much her daughter Andrea needed her but needed to be separate, and how could either of them figure that out, or make any sense of it?
Summarizing a lifetime of servanthood in a few sentences isn’t right, though; words do not do justice to her deeds. Mothers need dinner at a Brazilian steak house; they need time to talk and be listened to; they need touch and touch and loving touch. That’s some of what Margaret loves and needs today and tomorrow and then again in just a little while, as we listen to God together as best we can.
(Acts 16, Psalm 100, Colossians 3, John 15)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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