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Have you ever felt the ground metaphorically shift beneath your feet? A time when you're standing some place ordinary but suddenly realize that the landscape has changed. How many times have you been going through an average day when something happens that reorients everything? How many lives are disrupted or fractured by something unexpected? How often do you look around and wonder, "How did I get here?"
In the readings for this evening, Isaiah says, "the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones." To me, this sounds like such a shift, an acknowledgement that this moment and the next moment may not be connected by a straight line. The Lord comforted his people, but he will also have compassion on those whose suffering is yet to come, or perhaps whose suffering comes as a shock - a lightning stroke in a clear blue sky.
The psalmist says of the Lord, "The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season." This is another shift. We wait upon the Lord, eyes on him, patient and maybe satisfied. But the Lord knows that hunger - hunger for love, for peace, for justice, for health, for stability - will come. That hunger will come, unexpected at times, without warning, and the Lord will be there at the right time to feed us.
Jesus, in the Gospel for tonight, says of the Father, He "shows [the Son] all that he himself is doing, and he will show [the Son] greater works than these." The pattern continues. God the Father reveals all that he is doing, works in the here and now, but later he will reveal even greater works, works that exceed the demands of future pains. God knows that the human experience can be disjointed, punctuated by moments where what came before seems disconnected from what came after. Our senses of time, of identity, of place, are subject to wrenching discontinuations that leave us lost and feeling alone in a wilderness as unfamiliar as it is harsh and barren.
But I believe that God has made a promise to us, a promise to remain, a promise to do great works now and in the future when even greater works will be required. These passages from the readings speak to me of the times I am experiencing now. Perhaps many of you are as well. The events of the past several months, or longer, have left me wondering, "How did we get here?" I do not recognize where we are. I do not see the signs of hope that I once saw. I do not feel connected like I once did. The ground below my feet shifted. It seems like a moment ago things were very different.
So I think of this promise, and it does bring me comfort, but not without effort. In the aftermath of finding yourself disoriented and detached in that peculiarly human way, it is hard to regroup and hunker down. It is easy to become locked inside a shell, trying to ignore the world you no longer recognize. In the past, I have also found myself building up walls of anger or despair. Knowing that I do this doesn't make it any easier to notice myself doing it, but eventually, a voice finally makes it through.
Back in January, when Maryann organized the first impromptu prayer vigil, I was cowering inside my own head, hiding in the dark, when something happened. I felt the suffering of others in the pews that night. I felt a kinship with others seeking the same comfort, searching for answers to the same questions. I realized that I was not alone in that wilderness. Rather, I had put myself into a prison that hid the others from view.
Sitting there, watching a procession of people I loved, people I cared for, people I respected, light candles to cast the shadows back, looking for signs to escape that wilderness, I felt that promise that God makes to us. I felt the connection that I had been missing. I felt hope for the first time in a long time.
Preparing this reflection for tonight allowed me to put into words something I could not have described to you on that vigil night in January. When the fabric of our lives is torn, it can be hard to find a path back to wholeness. One by one I saw candles lit. Now I can say that what I felt was what Isaiah described. God, patiently and steadfastly, told me to come out of my prison, to come out of that darkness in which I hid and to show myself that I was not alone. God repeatedly beckoned me out until I heard the call.
And when I did, when I lowered those walls and uncovered my eyes, I heard that promise, the promise made explicit in Isaiah. "I will not forget you." We are never truly alone. Sometimes the frailty of our human senses makes it hard to know that. I am certain that I myself will fail to see that again someday. The ground will shift beneath my feet again, and I will do what humans do. Just as God will do what God does, repeating that refrain, "I will not forget you."
Amen.
Words: 2026 Keith E. Freeman, Madison Heights, MI, USA. All Rights Reserved.