How Shall I Repay?

How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things he has done for me? I shall lift up the cup of salvation … Psalm 116

When our children were young, we would say the grace I learned when I was a child: God is great; God is good; let us thank him for our food. We taught our children to say it properly, but inside my head I always wanted food to rhyme with good. Linguists tell us the words did so in the past, but our pronunciation of the word “good” has moved on.

Life is like that, I suppose. It moves on. A woman I know once remarked, “There are pillars and there are caterpillars. Pillars hold things up, but caterpillars move on and become butterflies!” While few people will admit they like change, the fact is most of us want change of one sort or another. It’s just that we prefer to have a say in what that change will look or feel like, or how much discomfort or pain we’ll have to endure to obtain what we’re after.

As the psalmist implies in the psalm, God is good. I suppose that’s why God does good things for us. I know God is good and delights in doing good. I’d like to think I’m the same way (having been made in the image of God), and yet counting my blessings often makes me feel more guilty than blessed.

It’s like when someone pays you a compliment, I never know what to do with it. I blush. I stutter and stammer. I insist it was nothing, or the product was mediocre at best. And then I think my modesty isn’t genuine, because inside I’m also pleased as punch, and that just makes me feel even guiltier than when I started the cycle of pleasure and guilt.

I think my relationship with God is like that sometimes. I am sure God is pleased whenever I do something nice, right, good, or loving. I am sure God looks at the honorable things we say and do and puffs out his godly chest and calls the angels of heaven together into some heavenly huddle and says, “Attsa my boy, down there!” or “Attsa my girl doing that!”

I am sure that’s what’s going on in God’s head and heart, and yet for some reason I can’t fathom, I can’t shake the fact that I still think of God and me in some sort of transactional relationship. Maybe it is because so much of the language we use has a monetary tone to it.

God paid for my sins. That implies I owe God. God redeems us. Oh, so now I am a coupon to be turned in for something better, newer, shinier?  Jesus saves. So I am a coin tossed into the darkness of a piggy bank. Wait … God can’t have a piggy bank; it wouldn’t be kosher!

Those are things my head tells me, and the psalmist seems to know it instinctively, too, for he asks quite clearly, “How shall I repay the Lord?”

He answers, “I shall lift up the cup of salvation!”

Have you ever hoisted a glass or cup and offered “Cheers!” to a person or group? What does it mean? It means “I only want the best for you, in abundant appreciation for who you are and, more importantly, what you mean to me.”

This is the blessing we offer to our children when they are baptized or married: “You are a child of God, a great gift from God, and I shall never forget that as long as we are alive!”

“You are a child of God, most loved and beloved. I do not abandon you when you cleave unto another – when I “give” you away; I embrace the one you embrace and treasure you all the more!”

Life and love don’t always work out that way or that well, but that’s our goal; that’s our target; that’s our hope and desire, and I believe that is God’s hope and desire for us as well, for the psalmist adds one more thing: “Precious in the sight of the Lord are those God loves.” Meaning?

We see caterpillars in the mirror; God sees butterflies. So spread your wings (but keep your CV-19 distance) here in this, God’s precious valley.

Good Lord, You've Delivered Us!

I will give thanks to you, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. Psalm 118

When asked what I was giving up for Lent, I would often joke I’d thought about giving up church for Lent. And then this year happened, and a nasty bit of nature made us give up everything, including church, not just for Lent, but perhaps for life. Oi vei!

We are often told we don’t appreciate what we have until we don’t have it anymore. My father-in-law, who served in the Army Air Corps during World War Two told of sharing coffee with some of the locals in Sicily when the island had been liberated, and the locals just wept. They had been without such a simple pleasure for so long – between the Liberation and the Coffee, they felt salvation had come to them at long last.

I am not a patient person, by and large. I would like to think I am, of course, but I am not. I want things done and I want them done quickly. As I write this, I have been home-bound for the most part for over a month, and it appears that may continue into the foreseeable future. It may seem a long time, and in some ways it is. But the Second World War lasted about six years and resulted in millions of deaths. This isn’t a contest, but we should realize that even a year of inconvenience pales in comparison to years of war-time deprivations and depredations.

The fact is that cures and vaccines may well take months, if not years, to develop and improve. One cannot speed up science, even in times of crisis. Many of us will recover through the miracle of our infection-fighting immune systems. Many of us might even avoid illness by taking social distancing seriously. The time will come when we will be able to avoid this particular illness entirely the way we avoid mumps, rubella,  or the measles via inoculations developed by scientists working away feverishly in labs.

I know that the next few Sundays will come and go and that for most of us, it will take place away from our congregations – for health and safety. Our love for God and neighbor forbids us from blindly ignoring common sense, and while worshiping together is our heart’s desire, Easter will just have to wait until next year – a sports metaphor we can employ for the time being.

I say that because I know this storm, like all storms, will pass. Some pass quickly, while some pass slowly, but if we wait patiently, all storms eventually run out of rain.

In the meantime, what can we do?

Well, Easter represents new life. On Good Friday, Jesus “breathed his last.” On Easter Sunday his breath was restored by God, and on that evening we’re told that Jesus breathed on his disciples, telling them to receive new life themselves, and share it in a spirit of love and forgiveness.

I suppose we could all sit around waiting for this virus to pass. We could put this time to work doing projects around the house we hadn’t gotten to over the past few decades (for I am a procrastinator par excellence). We can binge watch our favorite shows and dry up like old bananas left out on the counter one day too long. Or …

… we can call friends and family to see how they’re doing. We may not be able to visit them in person, but we can let them know they’re actually in our thoughts and prayers (which is a step beyond just mouthing those words as some tend to do).

We can touch base with those who may not be able to get out as readily and easily as us, and deliver needed supplies to them. We can keep proper spacing in the stores, and do so with smiles and other courtesies. We can endeavor to share good and joyful tidings on social media and spend less energy stirring up hornets’ nests.

Most of all, we can strive to find Christ in the lives of those around us, and strive to hear what God has to say to us through the saints we are sure to meet along the way. I think that’s how God delivers many of us here in this, our valley.

Good Lord, Deliver Us

“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine: Good Lord, deliver us …” The Great Litany

For the past several weeks, I’ve been sheltering in place in accordance with the Governor’s suggestions and, more recently, Executive Order.

I know many are sick of hearing about this viral pandemic, and I am certainly no doctor or scientist. My task, as a layman, is to listen to the experts and do as they suggest. While I am free to ignore their “advice,” it seems to be as unwise as ignoring the advice of the parachute instructor who suggests putting on the chute before leaping from the plane. Yes, you can ignore that advice, but you do so at your own peril.

As an introvert, I found the thought of self-isolating quite inviting. It would be a glass of ice-cold water on a hot summer’s day – refreshing beyond belief. But the reality has been anything but warm, cool, or refreshing. While I enjoy tumbling around the world wide web and reading the news or a good book, or spending time puttering around the house taking care of all those nagging little projects I’d put off until I had time to get to them – well, I’ve got the time and I’ve gotten to a lot of them, but I’ve found isolation hasn’t lived up to its promises.

Yes, I’m an introvert, but like every human being, I crave human contact. I went to one of the warehouse stores the other day to pick up supplies, and the people gathered were in a long line, maintaining the appropriate six foot space between carts and/or individuals, but boy was it a glum lot. If I hadn’t been seeing it in full living color, I would have sworn it should have been a black and white snapshot of Depression-era soup-lines. There was no chattering or bantering. Each seemed alone in their thoughts.

Buying a few essential perishables from the local grocer (bread and milk), I found myself separated from the clerk by a beautiful Plexiglas sneeze guard. Although I could see through it and hear her from around it, I found the experience to be very annoying. I don’t know why; the bullet-resistant glass we have grown accustomed to at our local banks is the norm, but a physical barrier between the customer and the dispenser of life-goods just seems almost immoral. I found myself talking around the glass to the cashier rather than through it just to delete as much as was humanly possible the artificiality of the tinny sound I was hearing when directly behind the glass.

I need others; I miss church.

I know the church is not the building where we gather as a community of faith to hear the Gospel and share the Sacraments. I know that we have been dispersed for the common good (and re-discovering the sometimes forgotten truth that church is seldom more church than when it is in the world operating beyond those cloistered spaces we’ve grown to love and appreciate).

I have been unsuccessful at accessing my own parish’s virtual worship on Sunday mornings despite being generally proficient in this digital age (and I am teachable – I think), it is not the same as sitting in the church with the warmth and vitality of the body of faithful surrounding me – what we refer to as the Real Presence of Christ.

I am doing what I am doing for the good of the community, and I think that is the way God would want it. This crisis, like every crisis and storm, will pass. We will learn things from it so that perhaps when the next storm makes land-fall we will be better prepared to handle it. That’s my hope.

In the meantime, I look around and realize I have a solid roof over my head; I have food in freezer and pantry; I have power, heat, water, and lights; without needing to resort to hoarding, I have sufficient paper goods to meet my needs for quite some time. Despite the threat of pestilence and the reality of loneliness, I am alive, I am well, and I am blessed.

The day will come when tears of sorrow will cease and joyful hugs will replace them here in this, our valley. Until then, keep the faith (and share it, too).