Monday, May 8, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sitting outside at Honest Mary’s
Andi’s friend from the Netherlands did not bring her winter coat on her holiday in Austin. She had to dig in her closet for summer clothes, and here we all were sitting in the breezy spring Sunday air outside everybody’s favorite restaurant.
We all found ourselves looking deeper inside ourselves. That’s my favorite kind of conversation. It seems for the moment, at least, as if there are no secrets, and everything is shareable, especially our confessional moments, when we are not ashamed of weakness, failure, illness, or even sin. It is easy to look into one another’s eyes.
I have always appreciated that infamous moment in the forest when God called out, and Adam said, “I was ashamed of my nakedness, and so I hid.” Adam set an example for us. God is not mocked, but God will not mock us either, not if we look up and show him our sin.
This is yet another example of how God makes it easy for us, when we let him do his job. Which is to love us no matter what. So therefore, poet Clarence Heller asks himself to stop trying so hard.
I stopped trying to have a relationship with God,
because I do.
I stopped trying to go deeper into relationship with God,
because it is nonsense to try to go deeper into what is boundless.
I stopped trying to love God more,
because I love God
(actually God is the source of this love)
as much as I possibly can at this moment
and even if I come to love God more tomorrow,
who is keeping track?
Surely not God.
I stopped trying to be good enough,
because I am.
I stopped trying to accept myself,
because now I do.
I stopped trying to be free,
because now I am soaring.
Praise you Jesus, now and forever!
Marc and I soared once, above Key Largo and the Florida Keys against the blue sky, a couple of days after Hurricane Charley pinned us in our motel room for a very scary night. I went up first and took a few pictures, remembering all my flights in a hot air balloon. Marc went up, then, and he watched us from way up there, in our suddenly small boat, the skipper giving him instructions now and then. Once he turned himself upside down and just hung there.
Can I be that vulnerable 20 years later, dangling upside down in front of God, feeling the warmth of his smile pouring into me and then out through mine? God’s laughter lifts me up again and again, on the sea and in the sky and walking with him on the earth. How sweet it is to be loved by You.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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