God's Time versus Human Time - Prayer intentions

Maybe in the generations before rapid changes in technology, livelihoods, and outlook on life there was a closer connection of the present-day to what the ancestors lived and what could be expected for one's descendants. In such times the words of the Lord's Prayer or any personal prayer spoken or written might talk about current situations but still resonate implicitly with times long ago and times yet to come in the same breath: "nowadays" really was more or less like the old days and the future times, too.

But in 2023 and for much of the 1900s, too, one generation to the next has faced different obstacles and opportunities, imagined different future possibilities and had different relationships to the past ways of thinking and acting, too. As a result, for people alive today to recite the Lord's Prayer (lead us not into temptation, for example) the assumption is about temptation right about now and maybe the next several days, or maybe in a more abstract sense of indefinitely for all time going forward. What if the meaning applied equally to now and the past and the future: God's Time, when distinctions of past-present-future are collapsed into everything-all at once-right now?

By taking into account the way God dissolves boundaries of past-present-future, one's own personal prayers and the congregational ones spoken together from prayerbook or psalter can mean all these things at once - prayers for those in one's life who breathe now, but also equally meaningful to pray for those long departed and even those before whom you never have met personally. Equally meaningful would be the prayers we make today for those yet to be; those in the near and distant future whom we never know personally. By taking this wider point of view, the Lord's Prayer and personal ones can be "time travelers" in a way to speak far into the past and future, not just the small circle of one's own knowledge. As a result, one's own relationship changes: instead of being one generational step on the staircase of history, now we are both this moment in time AND also integrally part of the whole of time, the whole staircase - not just an isolated step. Imagined barriers between the breathing moment of today and those long gone and those far in the future fade away and the connections become alive and ever present.

Here's the concluding part of the The Lord's Prayer (an uncommon translation to defamiliarize the usually taken-for-granted lines)

• Hawai'ian Pidgin English for Matthew 6:9-13 

No let us get chance fo do bad kine stuff,

    But take us outa dea, so da Bad Guy no can hurt us.

[Cuz you our King,

    You get da real power,

An you stay awesome foeva.

    Dass it!]'

By habit we see the petition "lead us not into temptation... forever and ever, Amen" talking about nowadays personally, and also a kind of generalization for all time (not just for ourselves personally, but for all people everywhere). But by seeing The Lord's Prayer and any other prayer as applying to past AND present AND future, then the words ripple across the sky and across all centuries in a much bigger and deeper meaning. We speak on behalf of ancestors and descendants; also, for strangers and for friends/family.

Holding lightly to the narrow path

This week's Men's Bible Study continued with Genesis. Our pace is slow but our discussion turns up rich thinking and reactions. This time it was the part when the twin brothers meet after years of estrangement. Esau brings 400 men along to visit Jacob, the deceiver. Jacob a.k.a. "struggles with God" (Isra-el) has a limp from his night of wrestling in the desert decades earlier. Both men have reached middle age and are blessed with descendants, chattels, and health. Their father, Isaac, lingers a little longer. And while the text of the scripture gives a certain amount of detail and character, much of God's work is non-verbal or perhaps involves words but goes beyond logic, syllogism, and narrative pace. Instead, there can be poetic overtones, and visual communication, and ambiguity (to mortal minds it appears contradictory or mutually exclusive; not to God, though) and ambivalence.

The NIV puts the desert wrestling match this way, [emphasis added]

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel*, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome." [NIV, Gen. 32: 28]

---*NIV footnote: Israel probably means he struggles with God.

Until this morning's discussion, that episode before the reunion of the brothers seemed to be a discrete episode: wrestling until daybreak, God asking the name of Jacob before giving this new name, no sense of Jacob sharing that new name with friends and family or else keeping it secret. But talking with the others in the Bible Study group, the sense of ongoing struggle came into focus; the translated English grammatical form "struggles" allows both interpretations of the description: completed event (one who struggles ---at that moment in time) or ongoing condition (one who daily struggles without end). As such, Jacob becomes every person seeking after God to know the righteous road: Jacob is a serial sinner and (self) deceiver who nonetheless keeps coming back to God, the struggle of wrestling with the Word (living Word and scriptural word) for Jacob is unending. 

In the same way that a person may say, "I am born again," and give the impression of passing a milestone or arriving at a new way of living, there is an underlying Jacob-like process going on. The person "is" now a Christian but not in a completed, "one and done," kind of way. Each new day brings temptations and opportunities for righteousness. It is a state of ongoing struggle and seeking and vigilance. Similarly, Jesus warned of false prophets: listen, yes, but always exercise discernment. Hold firmly, but let that hold be done lightly. Listen for God's will, but be careful not to confuse or conflate with your own wishes or worries. Watch for God at work around you, but do not willfully see only what suits your own sensibilities. Have faith to step into pathways unfamiliar; to break bread with strangers; to trust God's love. But let it be "trust but verify" to hold a degree of tension and vigilance always. As an embodied, lived out, religious tradition, Christianity has to be taught, learned, praised, worshiped anew each day. It is a living word to be lived out, not just studied or recited. As such, the expression, "to hold lightly," seems to sum up the way to walk in God's world. Coming into the body of believers is an important step, but it is not enough "to be" Christian. it is a continuing curve of growth and exercise; literally "be-ING" Christian, one day after another, one step after another, one prayer after another, one generation after another. 

Thinking about the character of the Abrahamic religion, one distilled image is of a "charitable friend." The trinitarian or unitarian relationship between believers and the Almighty is like the company of a life-long friend to accompany the ups and downs along with way. Rather than profound truths or galactic laws, it is the abiding commitment to generous friendship that sets apart the God of Abraham from other forms of understanding the universe and creation. Cynics might reduce such longing and support to anthropomorphizing the religion, vainly attributing human structure and interests onto the higher power. Who can say, truly: a God above all others may have human-like dimensions, but concurrently may well have dimensions totally unlike that. So believers may do best to accept the human-smelling godliness, but not foreclose the myriad truths of infinity, too. Not "either - or" (false dichotomy), but "both - and" (inclusive, ambiguous). Even if struggles to know God's ways never can lead to a comprehensive, encompassing grasp, just the effort at reaching out and seeking after brings life-giving benefit to self and others. So, taking Jacob as an example, it is worth "holding lightly" one's seeking after God, who, after all never nees to seek after us since he is ever-present already, if only we pay attention.

God is love, is present (now), is here (in this place), is holding you, is scaffolding

The word 'love' is so central to the example lived by Jesus and God the Father, not to forget the Holy Spirit. And yet, because English is relatively impoverished of vocabulary, "love" is used for everything from favorite ice-cream to one's pet rat to one's ancestors or BFF (best friend forever). So it is worth digging under the shiny and care-worn surface of 'love' when hearing the phrase or when declaring that "God is love." Or "faith, hope, love... the greatest of these is love."

In the various meanings and purposes of the word 'love' there are a few common elements. One is about positive affect. Another is emotional power and strength and durability or commitment. Still another facet seems to be something like ownership or possession, but not in the way that property "ownership" means exclusive use-rights; controlling who has access and how the space/time may be used (or is forbidden). Rather, this sort of 'owning' is about holding firmly, not to control but rather to release into the wider world of relationships yet to be. Just like "owning" a description, credit-worthy or blame-worthy of words or deeds, so it is with "owning" your love of a person, place, or thing: you hold it firmly, like a short-term gantry of a moon rocket, or a temporary scaffold that makes possible the construction of a long-standing building. in other words, "love" in the usage about God loving his people (and the reverse, too, how people profess their love of God and God's ways and godliness) can be restated as something like: holding firmly so that God's true nature (merciful, eternal, righteous, and so on) can fully form and then go into the wider world to do God's will.

Thinking about the image of scaffolding more figuratively, perhaps that is a big part of spiritual growth and maturity, too. Things like sacred places (built by humans or naturally occurring), relics and symbols, Order of Worship, spoken liturgy and praises sung in the melodies and words of hymns, rituals during the passage of a lifetime, and so on can structure one's activities and mental (and heart-filled) attention, much like a scaffolding enables a building to grow to finished form. Once accomplished, though, the scaffolding can come down. Its pieces are no longer needed. A beginner seeks and benefits from structures and guidelines and landmarks to navigate with. But a mature person of faith is less concerned with the outward elements and instead dwells on the inward ones (one's heart of hearts).

Putting these speculations of "love" as a kind of holding firm but ready to let go, too; and the idea of scaffolding that holds a person in place during the process of building a durable house of faith, it does seem that love can be unpacked to see its many facets, but that overall the net effect is that God's love amounts to a kind of scaffolding. When fully developed and set free, then a person can venture into the wider world where "all people are God's children," and "there is no Us and Them, stranger or friend" - all fit into one's circle of concern. No matter the denomination, or perhaps even the name of the spiritual tradition, so long as the person opens their heart, pauses from the daily grind to look up or glance around to listen for God, then one's actions and list of achievements only matter to the extent that the heart grows used to glorifying God. If one's actions fail, God will still find a way. The doing matters only because it engages and opens one's heart, not because it succeeds (or fails) in any material sense of achieving a worldly goal (building and grounds committee, mission project, fund-raising goals, etc).

In summary, "God is Love" can be recharacterized to dig under the glossy surface of casually disregarding "love": God is about holding firm so you can mature to the point of no longer leaning on external supports and now can enter into the wider world of sharing that love with others, so that God's will can be done eternally. Whether or not your actions have worldly success or not is less important than the effect of softening one's hard heart and making one's ears and eyes open. Just as a worship service begins with an invocation of God to join with the worshippers, it is not God who has to show up but the reverse: it is a matter of invoking the worshipers to open their ears and eyes and leave aside the distractions and worries of daily living.