A Sign of God's Favor

"At once the spirit sent him out into the desert."

Mark 1:12

This statement immediately follows God's declaration of love for and approval of Jesus after Jesus is baptized by John. Maybe God wanted Jesus to be aware of his favor before he entered the challenging period in the desert.

Don't take difficulty as a sign of God's absence or displeasure. It may be just the opposite.

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Casual Holiness

About a year ago I was on my way into a church to attend a meeting. As I approached the door I passed a woman sitting on a red, overturned milk crate near the door. She had dark hair, and she was leaning forward, her bottom coming off the crate, her hands reaching just off the edge of the sidewalk and toward the asphalt of the parking lot. She appeared to be slowly falling forward, tumbling off the crate in slow motion. I had stopped to hold the door for a man who was entering the church just behind me, and as I watched, he approached the woman on the crate. "Here's two of them," he said, handing down a carton of Marlboro Light 100s. "Have a good day." I realized then what the man with the Marlboros must have recognized immediately: the woman had no doubt been reaching for a discarded cigarette butt that someone had tossed down on their way into the church. I felt awed by the man's simple act of compassion. Without the slightest trace of judgement or distast...

A Sabbath Day

I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today, nearly black knobby fruits, their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted, dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed, spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful, stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths, purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled, and returning from that failed trip we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.

A Living Body of Poetry

Reading and listening to the news makes the Psalms come to life. Children threatened with separation from their families, international tensions, indigenous people displaced from their homeland. Even in this too-brief sampling of common headline topics a person can find plenty of reason, as the psalmist did in his own context, to shake a fist at heaven, tear one's garments, beg for mercy and cry out for justice. When I am caught up in my own mostly comfortable life, the Psalms are hard to reach, both their anguish and their ecstasy remote from my daily grind. As soon as I graze the surface of human suffering, however, the words of the Psalter become vivid, potent, a living body of poetry pulsing with human feeling and desire. Here is at least one good reason to read both the news and the Psalms: to remember that I am part of the human family, which is also to remember my responsibility for the welfare of that family.

The Mundane Way

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