In Times Like These

Reflection on finding our way during troubled times.

In Times Like These…

We are living through times of great chaos. Upheaval. Disruption. Times like these make us restless. We are left troubled and unsettled.  We wonder if the world is not what we thought it was, at least not anymore.  Perhaps it was once, but not anymore. 

Can we go back?  Back to how it was before?  Can we unring a bell?

Can we recreate for our kids and grandkids the simpler world we grew up in?

Part of me wishes we could, but I doubt it is going to happen.  

What if God is calling us in these troubled times, not to go backward, but to go forward trusting him through it all, and grow.  What if times like these require us to face facts, and trust God more than we trust ourselves?

Times like these force us to abandon the illusion that we have control over curcumstances. We can’t. The truth is we never could.

One of my favorite quotes is from Anne Lamott. This is it:

“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.”

Anne Lamott

In times like these, we are called to accept the limits of our own understanding.  We don’t know it all. We can’t. And it’s ok. We were never meant to know it all. 

God never changes.  But like the people of God through the ages, our understanding of God changes as we grow.  The God of history who created the cosmos, reveals himself to us in history.  Yet our grasp of who God is and what it means to be faithful to Him is incomplete.  The totality of who God is and what it means to be faithful to Him transcends human capacity to comprehend and articulate. Instead, we encounter God and experience his presence with us even in times like these.  An authentic encounter with the Risen Christ leaves us dancing with a mystery we cannot put into language precisely. Like Moses we find our language is inadequate to say what we know from being in the presence of God here and now.

As the familiar passage of scripture below says, now we see through a glass dimly.  To deny this is to reason like a child, as the scripture says.

So what is there for us to do, in times like these?  To give up our futile pursuit of perfect doctrine, turn to God, be in His presence, worship Him, love Him, dance with the mystery of Who we know.  Then love one another…�'�…

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 5-13 RSV

https://bible.com/bible/2020/1co.13.6-13.RSV