And now that I am old and gray-headed, O
God, do not forsake me, till I make known your strength to this generation and
your power to all who are to come … Psalm 71
I am old and gray-headed as I start this column. I wasn’t
always that way, of course. I was once a bouncing baby boy – full of life and
drool and (likely) a bit of other stuff as well. I knew nothing of God and
don’t know a whole lot more now. I grew up in a family that didn’t go to
church, so my earliest experience of God was generally as a word attached to a
string of other words expressing some displeasure toward someone or some
unpleasant thing the adult members of the family were experiencing (I’ll
mention no names).
That changed over the years and we began to attend a local
church which, to be honest, I found quite boring. The music leader would jump
up and down trying to whip the congregation into a frenzy whenever they were
singing one of their hymns, and yet the congregation just dragged its feet and
refused to become enthused.
We sang sitting down, as I recall, and if there is one
thing I’ve learned over the intervening decades it’s that one cannot sing while
sitting down. You need to stand to allow your diaphragm to work properly, and
to get your air moving in and out with strength and gusto (and hit those
gosh-awful high notes that are thrown in for good measure by those
dirge-writing craftsmen of yore).
Well, we did some church-shopping back in those days and finally
found a parish where the people stood to sing and knelt to pray and where it
seemed God was something other than a swear-word. And with that, something
changed in me.
I loved the calisthenics in church. We were always moving:
standing, sitting, and kneeling. Worship wasn’t passive, but active, and I came
to discover that a congregation isn’t an audience sitting listlessly while
watching an entertainment event up front, but a community gathered before God
to engage in a divine conversation.
There is no one right way to do church, of course. People
may look around and I suspect they are bewildered by all the different choices
out there in their communities. I think humans are diverse enough that God recognizes
a diversity of expressions will, of necessity, take place. I appreciate the
more settled rhythm and flow of a liturgically oriented church. Others may prefer
more loosie-goosie expressions of faith. Each is different from the other, yet
each points beyond itself to God.
Today, I am old. I’m not decrepit (yet), but there are days
I feel my age more than others. I’m old and I have come to believe more and
more two things about God: God is love, and in our being filled with the
Divine, God expects us to share that love.
Some may complain that’s too simplistic. They could be
right. Who am I to argue? I am sure God has enough space in heaven that those
who are of an exclusive bent can have their own quarters and not be disturbed
by the grand banquet taking place for the rest.
That’s the other thing I’ve learned. I am here, and my
life’s experience has spanned fewer than seven decades in that continuum called
eternity. I don’t really think God expects any of us to get our acts all that
well put together to be perfectly right about anything. She is satisfied to
have us sit in the back seat of the Family Sedan and not kill each other on
this trip we call life.
God’s promise, as I understand it, is that God will lend us
the strength and the power we need to behave responsibly in taking care of creation,
in loving one another, and in being decent human beings – reflections of the
Divine – in our own speaking and doing.
We may botch things up from time to time; I know I have,
do, and will! But we have God’s word that we have been forgiven, are forgiven,
and will be forgiven. God expects us to pass that favor (called “grace”) along:
“Forgive us … as we forgive …”
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