My two friends and I felt
profoundly uncomfortable after being labled as primitive thinkers and left with
much alacrity, not staying for coffee despite the invitation from our
classmate. We retreated to a restaurant,
Cora’s, and took turns speaking the longest grace we had ever spoken.
It was like we had been starved
for the Divine and were more hungry for prayer than we were hungry for eggs
benny and a mountain of fruit. That
service had filled us with the message that we weren’t good enough, and that
everything we thought about was mere superstition and ignorance. The Quaker service we went to the following
week filled us with peace, self-reflection, and a deep sense of the real
presence of the sacred. In a word, we
felt comforted.
Comfort oh comfort my people,
starts the Isaiah passage and this year more than ever, we need all the comfort
we can get. We’re still not in as dire a
situation as the ancient Israelites that Isaiah was writing to, but it’s plenty
dire enough.
Whenever I turn, I hear stories
of people feeling stressed, whether it’s the customers at grabbing a
gingerbread latte from Paddymelons or the news reporter talking to a psychologist
on how to help children cope or the loud judgemental voices on Facebook
scorning public health officials. Secret
deals to set up emergency hospitals run by soldiers doesn’t help our levels of
stress and it’s scary to hear of fist fights in Calgary malls or see photos of
exhausted doctors.
So much chaos in the media and in
our community does not make for peaceful times.
Where do we turn when we want comfort?
Many folks are turning to drugs and alcohol to manage their anxiety
levels; some are turning to their worst habits and patterns as we hear in the
latest reports from Healthy Family, Healthy Futures. Irene Fitzsimmons, whom many of you know, is hearing
more and more cases of family violence. Her
case numbers are rising as tempers flare and tolerance drops.
We look for quick fixes and
perfect heroes, but we don’t know where we can find them. Where is the comfort we are seeking, the
security we are craving, the sense of peace we are praying for?
I wonder if this year, we’re more
able to appreciate the context and the testimony of our ancestors in
faith. Isaiah is writing to a people who
have been suffering in exile for a hundred and fifty years. It’s been generations since Jerusalem had
been taken over by the Babylonians and the inhabitants forced into slavery and
exile.
The level of hope and peace must
have been almost nonexistent to the generations who had never experienced the
freedom to live where they chose or work at what they wanted.
And yet, one person in the quiet
and stillness hears a simple invitation from God, “Go and tell my people that
their time of alienation and oppression is nearing to an end, that a new time
is coming and their God has not abandoned them.”
We need these words of
encouragement today more than ever. We
need the reminder that this too shall pass, that humanity will survive this and
the world will change again for the better.
We do this through humbleness, turning away and repenting of the quick
fix solutions that only mask our anxieties and don’t deal with the root causes
of our discomforts. We do this by
following Isaiah into the wilderness to hear God speak into the silence. We do this by avoiding preaching like the
atheist who bragged of her superiority.
We preach like John who says one greater than I is coming who will
baptise with power and authority.
Searching for peace is more than
superficial. It is a daily practice, and
a willingness to look at ourselves with honesty, stripping off layer after
layer like peeling an onion. To spend
time looking at our actions and reactions and ask gentle questions of
ourselves, where did that impatience come from, what was that resentment about,
why did I react so strongly? And
remember that God says to us, “I come with a strong arm to set things right and
a gentleness that gathers us like a flock of sheep and lambs”. We practice peace with God’s loving presence,
and that is good news worth shouting from the mountaintops and sharing with the
world. Thanks be to God that we are not
alone in our journey to peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment