Burned to a new beginning

Wild fires are reaping their annual destruction out West; acres of forest and folks' homes in the path of the fire storm are being lost.  In this we see both endings and beginnings.

Fire helps forests regenerate; it contributes to the life cycle of a forest and enables some frail flora to get a new foothold.  That's what the experts tell us.

People, on the other hand, do not consider the complete destruction of all that they own to be a necessary part of anyone's life cycle. They have no desire to test the potential of new beginnings by having everything turned into ash.  I wouldn't eithe,r even though we all know that there will be new beginnings - there simply has to be.  They will re-build their homes and their lives and most will take away some learning from these terrible days of loss.

In the Old Testament, God manifests both power and presence through a pillar of fire which protected, guided and reassured the Israelites on their flight out of Egypt.  That old pillar of fire said God was there, God was powerful, and God knew their plight.  This is exactly the kind of assurance most of us can use when it looks like everything we value is turning to ash.  I wouldn't mind a smaller version of that old pillar of fire when the forces of this world are taking their toll on my life.

However, I cannot forget that God's fire was also pressing Israel forward, into unknown land with unknown outcomes....with just a bunch of promises and a picture of what it was going to be like.  The fire may have protected them from the Egyptians who were following, but it also kept Israel from going back to the land of captivity. It was forward or nothing at all.

That's where we are headed with this God - forward, into the unknown, away from captivity to the forces of this world and onto a place - a promised place - where God is leading us.....even if it often feels like God is simply keeping the heat on our backsides so we don't change our minds.  Scares me sometimes; enthralls me the next.  Let us go forward, then, together.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

When Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem in his last days (according to Matthew) he weeps, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"  Mt.23.37

As we approach the celebration of the Christ child's birth in Bethlehem, we must also keep a picture of Jerusalem in the background, for the import of one is dependent on the events in the other.
In 2012, we are challenged to keep a realistic picture of Jerusalem (in all its political, historic and religious depth) on our mind as well lest we make the incarnation of God in Jesus as sentimental picture of familial warmth. 

That is, if Jesus is in fact at the center of God's plan for all creation, then that ancient city of Jerusalem, still wracked by political agendas and religious extremists, continues to be a part of God's plan for the world.

A good friend has been traveling with an official Lutheran delegation and has had as conversation partners speakers from Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, from the far right to the far left on both sides.  His trip has drawn to a close and here is his final post, a quote fromYossi Klein Halevi, a  journalist in Israel

              "When I become too immersed in the political work of a journalist, I sometimes hear
              the words of Sheykh Ibrahim: 'There are enough politicians in the land of the prophets.
              But where are the prophets in the land of the prophets?' I tell myself that it is precisely
              in times like these that the beautiful teachings of faith become either real or mere
                    sentiment. More than ever, the goal of a spiritual life in the Holy Land is to live with  an open heart at the center of unbearable tension."

We are called to just such a life, lived on the razor's edge of reason and trust, clarity and mystery, and a hope that passes all understanding.  Shalom