Tuesday, February 27, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
 Corned beef hash at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they will become white as snow, though they are red as crimson, they will be as wool.
My friend John and I had a little brunch together today at Urbana Gardens. We spoke in love, we turned the subject on its ear a number of times, John used his theater-major gifts to make me laugh, in short – we did what we’ve always done for the ten plus years we’ve known each other, but have not done for awhile.
At first those many years ago we spoke of grief and recompense for the loss – there were none, of course. He would not do his wife that injustice. There are still none, but John and I have both learned some of the art of replacement. He prays with and to his lost wife every day. His prayers are replete with ritual, but when we’re together both of our thoughts and prayers run over all those beautiful liturgical boundaries. Into strawberry fields. Forever. At play in the house of the Lord.
We ate eggs and a BLT. I had corned beef hash, a biscuit and gravy, a cup of steamed restaurant coffee. Enough? Sure. We drank lots of water. We prayed for our server Angela and for all the parts and people in our lives, caught for a moment in God’s spyglass. And when we were nearly finished a lovely older (well, not as old as us) man stood up from the booth behind us and stopped by our table.
“I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed your conversation and your prayer,” he said. Smiling.
“I’m a believer too.”
We looked at each other. John had said something about how our prayer together rang a lot of bells. “Like we’re ambassadors!” He smiled his big fine smile and I thought about diplomacy, and the opposite of war, and how ambassadors ideally do all they can to avert the killing, in spite of so much careless thinking at the top. Ambassadors at their best never sacrifice compassion for self-protection.
Good luck with that whenever a group gathers, however. The lowest common denominator is so easy to get to. It is much easier to go up against than it is to go up for, and in a group, even harder.
Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil, learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.
We’re working on that. Our prayers private and personal, public and ambassadorial, compassionate and self-protective, run the gamut and brave the gauntlet of our sometime inability to forgive ourselves, and then the consequent false guilt.
God wants our confession, that’s all, and his compassion never fails. We don’t need to be afraid. Not any of us, whether or not we see ourselves as spiritual diplomats. Because God sees us all that way. He knows how much we need each other.
Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
(Isaiah 1, Psalm 50, Ezekiel 18, Matthew 23)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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