Exodus 2:11-3:22
Matthew 17:10-27
Psalm 22:1-18
Proverbs 5:7-14
When you look at what is going on in the world, do you ever feel tempted to fall into despair? Leave aside whatever problems you might be facing - family, finances, employment, health. The burdens you bear make you want to look outside you for hope you cannot find within…and then you face a world where people deny things as fundamental as the right to life and the immutability of gender, where truth cannot get in the way of a "narrative".
I freely admit I write this today because, having endured the insistent absurdity that a wall is not a barrier to passage, the celebration that accompanied a newly passed New York permitting abortion until just before a baby comes to term was difficult. Bad enough the celebration that surrounded the signing of the bill, perhaps worse the lighting of the Empire State Building to commemorate.
How to deal with despair? Today's scripture gives us wonderful, practical guidance. A man despairing of his son's seizures came to Jesus, whose disciples had been unable to cure the boy. Jesus not only alleviates the cause of the man's despair, he tells us the cure: faith, with which "nothing will be impossible for you." In this story's version in the Gospel According to Mark, the boy's father exclaims "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
Faith allows us to look beyond the causes of our despair, to know that there is victorious resolution, even in the face of what was supposed to have been the greatest victory of sin - when, as it says in the psalm, "they pierce my hands and feet…they divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment."
Father it is easy to get overwhelmed by the seeming hopelessness of our condition. Give us the faith not just to endure, but to triumph over the despair in the knowledge Your Son "has overcome the world."
No comments:
Post a Comment