Wash Your Hands, for Heaven's Sake!

Some years ago I was asked to take services for a small church out in the sticks. I led the service, preached, and served communion. After the service, people thanked me for coming; thanked me for my sermon; thanked me for being there; invited me to stick around for coffee. They did all the right things; they said all the right things.

But there was this one woman who came, looked me in the eye, and said, “You didn’t wash your hands after the peace! You didn’t use the sanitizer!” And like Moses heading home to Mt. Sinai, she turned and left. (I had done the ablutions, but that wasn't enough for her). She left, so I couldn't apologize, and we couldn't have a conversation - because I really did appreciate her concern!

In this day and age of aids, zika virus, flesh-eating bacteria and all the rest, we’re learning to take sanitation and hygiene more seriously, aren’t we? We need to!

It’s actually hard not to be clean, when you think about it. We’ve got hot and cold running water in our homes and shops. Our laundry soap tells us we can wash our clothes in cold water, and while there might be science behind that claim, my gut tells me clothes need to be washed in hot water to be really clean.

I KNOW the water isn’t hot enough to kill germs, and clean clothes isn’t about killing germs (but removing dirt and stains), and yet my gut tells me – use the hot water (or at least warm), because warm water feels better when I wash my hands. Hot water feels better when I wash dishes. Sanitizer may work scientifically, but I hate the feel of it! Give me soap and water any day!

In the gospel, Jesus has his critics. Folks have come from Jerusalem to check him out. They haven’t come to talk about the cripple he restored to wholeness. They’re not there to talk about the little girl who’s life he’s saved, or the woman who’s 12 years of miserable bleeding he stopped, or the demons he has cast out of synagogue or the guy down by the graveyard. They’re not there to talk about his feeding 5,000 men over here, or feeding 4,000 over there, or helping the blind to see or the deaf to hear.

No, they’ve come to see what kind of teacher he is (must have been Labor Day – right before school is set to start).

They see his disciples – his students – eating without first washing their hands, and they’re shocked!

(Mark even makes an aside and says, “No one does clean like the Jewish people; they wash their hands before every meal; they wash their pots and pans; and they even wash their fruits and vegetables when they bring them home from market!”)

But we do a dis-service to the story if we think they’re just talking about hygiene here.

These are the People of God. It’s not about washing fruits and vegetables, pots and pans, or face and hands.

Water is precious. Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, had a town well. It was not unusual for the well to go dry in the summertime, and folks would have to go into the hills, find a spring, and carry home their water each day – not just for cooking and drinking, but for their ablutions, as well.

Water is precious. Water is heavy (pint/pound). Water is scarce.

“But this is who we are,” say the Jewish leaders. “Washing our hands, we remember God brought us across the sea to freedom. Washing our faces, we remember God gave us to drink from the rock in the desert. Washing our fruits and vegetables, we remember God brought us across the Jordan into the Land of Promise.”

Water reminds us we are God’s people – separate, and holy. We’re not talking about hygiene. We’re not talking about best practices. We’re not talking about good habits to get into. We’re talking about our identity as the People of God.

Now, it’s interesting. Jesus doesn’t apologize for being a bad teacher. He doesn’t rationalize his actions – although it look like that’s what he’s doing. Mark (or a redactor) says, “Yea, we don’t have to follow these man-made rules. We’re free to eat what we want.”

But Jesus isn’t rationalizing his behavior or making excuses for his disciples (who really were slobs).

I wonder if, deep down inside, Jesus wasn’t just a little bit embarrassed by his disciples. They didn’t seem to be very good at following the rules – picking grain on the Sabbath, eating meals without washing their hands. They walked with him and talked with him but they never seemed to “get it” – whatever he was talking about.

But instead of excusing their behavior, or dealing with it right then and there, Jesus went in a different direction.

“What you can see is important, but it seems what goes in is LESS important than what comes out.”

Now, our lesson skips a bunch of verses (and I hate it when they do that), but Jesus goes on to talk about – well, let’s call it what it is – manure!

Has anyone here ever stepped in doggie-do, or a big ol’ cow-pie out in the middle of a pasture?

Jesus looked around. This was sheep land. This was goat land. This was the land of ox-teams who plowed the fields. Jesus and his disciples went everywhere on foot. Undoubtedly, they were all-too-familiar with landmines along the way.

“Oh John!” “Oh Judas!” “Oh Peter!”

Jesus says, “You know, it’s not what goes in that’s the problem. It’s what comes out; THAT’s the problem!”

The same way, Torah goes in and tells us we are God’s people; good people; loving people; holy people. All that good stuff comes in, but what comes out?

“All those wonderful sins come out of us. They stink to high heaven. We don’t know how. We don’t know why. We wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”

Have you ever gotten a whiff of something and blamed it on the dog or the cat, or one of the other people in the room?

Not that I ever do that, but don’t you find yourself trying to pass off responsibility to someone else. If there’s 2 people in the room, you go, “Was that you?” People will try to look innocent, won’t they?

Jesus says, “That’s the human condition. The problem isn’t that we’re human. The problem isn’t that we’re fallible. It’s that we try to pretend we’re innocent when we’re not – that we’re better than those around us.”

In our collect for day, we pray for God to graft in our hearts love of his Name. What is God’s name? YHWH – I am who I am.

We ask God to increase in us TRUE RELIGION.

I get a kick out of people who say, “I’m not a religious person; I’m a spiritual person” as if that makes them superior. That’s as silly as saying “I go to church, so I’m better than you” or “I pray in the woods so I’m better than you.”

The root of the word spiritual is “spiritu” wind – breath – life. In Hebrew it is Ruah; in Greek it is Pneuma. If you are alive; if you draw breath, you are a spiritual being. You’re not superior to anyone or anything.

The root of the word religion is “liga” – connection. In music, when you see a smile or a frown over some notes, it is called a “ligature” – it means the songwriter wants those notes connected as a unit. True religion is that which connects us with God AND with one another.

Jesus says to the folks from Jerusalem, “Washing is important, but if you don’t see the connection between the act and God, then there’s a problem. If it divides us into ‘we and they,’ or ‘us and them,’ or ‘in and out,’ then there’s a problem.”

As Helen has said often, “Life is complicated.”

We ask God to bring us together – not to remove us from the world, not to wrap us up in bubble-wrap to keep us safe, but to bring us together so that, together, we can see the wonderful things God is doing in our midst, identify them, tell one another about them (and share them with the world around us – our friends and neighbors and family members and maybe even our enemies), and find ways to build one another up, rather than tearing one another down.

Instead of pointing out faults like the professionals from Jerusalem, our task is to share our vulnerabilities with one another; to confess our faults, identify our weaknesses and failings, and to look one another in the eye, not to say, “Oh look, a speck!” but rather, “Oh goodness, I’ve got this log stuck in my face, but I can’t see it to pull it out. Would you help me?”

That’s the point of the Gospel. “Graft in our hearts a love of your name (which is I AM ALL THAT THERE IS), increase in us TRUE CONNECTIONS, nourish us with GOOD STUFF, and let only SWEET THINGS pour out of our lives (and our mouth); on those occasions we find ourselves really ‘stepping in it,’ help us to laugh, clean up, and move on, and for heaven’s sake, help us remember to wash our hands, in Jesus’ Name.”

Amen.

Vacating Life

We did not all come over on the same ship, but we were all in the same boat.  – Bernard M. Baruch

It is something of an oxymoron to confess that while I have been retired about a year now, my wife and I haven’t really taken time off to enjoy a vacation.

Unless you are desperate for some sleep, I don’t need to bore you with the details of what we’ve been up to this past year, but suffice it to say it has involved moving to our new house, settling in, and doing everything we could and can to make it into a home. I am pleased to report that while it is still a work in progress, we seem to have moved forward far enough to risk taking some time away to simply enjoy days that, in the short term, won’t involve mowing lawns, weeding gardens, unpacking boxes, or vacuuming floors.

Our plan is to head over to the Olympic Peninsula to visit some beaches and historic sites, do some hiking to see some of the waterfalls for which the Olympics are noted (assuming the rivers and creeks haven’t all dried up; they are reputedly most impressive in early summer), and otherwise relaxing in the shade of old growth forests.

Vacations aren’t something I do well, however.

I suppose some of my reluctance to enjoy summer holidays stems from my youth, where vacations meant piling into the back of the family sedan, four kids smooshed into a space designed for three, driving for several days straight from our home in Seattle to visit relatives out near Chicago, and having little to do upon arriving except to sit in the sweltering heat of summer while the adults sat in the shade shooting the breeze and enjoying their adult beverages.

Not all vacations were hot and boring, though. I remember a trip the family took one time to a nearby lake when I was just a wee lad of seven or eight. We stayed in a small travel trailer, which I presume was a rental as we didn’t own one. My dad bought my brother and me a kid’s fishing rod, which had about five feet of string attached. I presume it had a kid-friendly hook, but don’t recall for sure. It didn’t matter as I knew, even at that tender age, that I would never catch fish a foot or so from shore – and didn’t. On a positive note, it wasn’t hot. On the flip side, it was boring.

Another time our family took a trip to the very same Olympic National Forest we will soon be visiting. We were a family of four at the time, and it was summer (I’m sure it was before I was in school yet – the memories are very faint). My dad, ever the soldier, set up the tent in quick and efficient fashion and even went to the trouble of digging out a small drainage trench around it “just in case.” Well, that night it poured. To be more accurate, a tsunami came down from the darkened sky and nearly washed us away into the River Hoh (or whatever creek we had camped beside). The next morning we poured the campsite back into our rusted ’49 Plymouth and drove home. I’ll be honest; I don’t remember much fun happening on that trip, either.

These incidents, though, do bring to mind the one thing I enjoy doing more than pretty much anything else. I love to complain! I am never so happy as when I’ve got something to criticize. I resonate with Saint Paul who says at one place in one of his early columns, “Oh, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Now there’s a saint after my own heart!

The answer, of course, is one who took the ultimate trip from paradise, set up his tent in our world, and went to the grave that we might live. Keeping that in mind, I find it helpful to pause from my carping and to be simply thankful. When I let go and let God, so to speak, life becomes much more bearable – even vacation-life!

Furthermore, not everyone gets to go on vacation, and with any luck, I’ll have more stories to share with you when I get back here in this, God’s valley. Until then, I’m outa here!

Things to Do Whilst Your Summer Sails Along

I am running away, but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat – Tennessee Williams

I was scanning the internet the other day. Sometimes this activity is known as killing time, although, to be honest, time has been killing me for years. If you don’t believe me, come on over and take a look. So I found myself tumbling through some random spots online and found a gif (a brief moving picture or clip that runs for about 1 or 2 seconds). It was the picture of a sailboat where the sail was adjusted for the wind, and as the canvass swung from one side to the other, it caught and tossed a sailor into the sea.

That’s all there was to the image, and I found myself briefly wondering, hoping (and presuming) the sailor was retrieved by his fellow yachtsmen. Beyond that, though, I found it quite comical and entertaining – not unlike some Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin bit.

As we head into the dog days of summer, it occurs to me that some folks may be struggling with bouts of boredom and looking for ways to stay busy. As a service to my readers, then, I thought I would provide you with my top ten list of things to do when the mosquitos are biting and the fish aren’t – and you’re looking for some sort of reprieve from those flaccid days of summer. In no particular order, here goes:

Coming in at #10, go inside, close the drapes and blinds, select a decade, and binge watch your favorite TV show. Bonanza will probably take you almost to Halloween!

At #9, do a search on Tumblr, select a topic of interest, and follow the Links, Likes, and Followings until you get back to where you started – or Christmas (whichever comes first).

At #8, hop in the car or truck and see how far into the mountains you can get. Then hop out and see how long it takes for anyone to notice you’re missing. Remember, your local Search and Rescue team needs practice, so this would be a genuine community service. And for all those times your better half has asked you to Get Lost, you can show them how much you really DO listen!

At #7, when telemarketers call, ask them to hang on; then go water your lawn, wash your dishes, plan a deck party, or run to the store and do some grocery shopping. Warning: Do this only with your landline. Charges may apply against your cellular plan, so check with your attorney first.

At #6, sit down and address your Christmas cards. Begin your annual Christmas letter, starting each paragraph with a succeeding letter of the alphabet. Your friends and family will LOVE it!

Coming in at #5, close your windows, turn off your lights, climb into bed with flannel sheets and turn on your electric blanket and pretend it is winter. You may not get much rest, but you’ll quickly drop a few pounds and fit into those clothes you’ve been storing since 1977.

At #4, head over to your favorite community service organization and ask them how you can (gasp) be of service. Offer them the gift of your time, talent, or treasure (whichever works best for them). Make a commitment and stick with it.

At #3, take a stroll downtown, block the sidewalk and talk with visitors and friends. Grab a soft drink or water, look at traffic on the main drag through town, take a deep breath, and remember that’s what folks in big cities deal with all year long. Exhale, and offer God a note of thanks.

At #2, call a friend or family member you haven’t seen or talked to in a long time, and catch up. Note: Hang up on the telemarketer first.

And finally, coming in at #1: Go outside and when the first star appears, don’t make a wish. Just be thankful, and enjoy the view, for you’re closer to heaven than you can possibly know.

There you are. Enjoy these waning days of summer, don’t play with fire and, for heaven’s sake, watch out for pranksters in this, God’s valley.

The Trimming Life

We’re all only fragile threads, but what a tapestry we make – Jerry Ellis

Ah, the joys of retirement.

I held my a trusty tape measure against a piece of wood, made a magical mark, measured a second time (as any wood-working professional would), confirmed the measurement was true and accurate, then proceeded to cut the door trim with my miter saw at an angle set for the proper number of degrees. When finished, I carried and tested the finished product against the door frame and – voila! It was too short. It seems I mitered the board in the wrong direction from my mark. Uff-da!

It’s ironic being a man who worked some thirty three years for a Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth (the carpenter – not me) and finding myself with all that experience still being able to make that sort of mistake. What a life! The double irony is that I don’t recall ever cutting a sermon too short!

But life moves on. One can’t stop trying just because things don’t work out as planned the first time and, to be honest, I know my skills with wood and saws well enough to confess I actually figured something like that would happen, so I made sure I had extra wood on hand!

Hah! Take that, o ye Fates!!!

I don’t mind admitting failure. Oh sure, there was a time I would have swept the sawdust under the rug and denied ever making an error like that, but that was so long ago the Allosauruses who might have tattled on me have gone the way of all the rest of the dinosaurs. And besides, it’s possible I’ve grown wiser. What’s the fun in hiding the funny things we mortals do, anyway?

I’m sure it isn’t funny to the tree that gave it’s all so I could trim the doorway in our home, but I managed to put the scrap lumber to use for smaller trim pieces that were also needed, so all was not lost. I have come to realize that life is too short to sweat the petty stuff. As someone once said, “Those who’ve never made a mistake have never done anything.”

The fact is there was nothing wrong with the door trim or baseboards in our house – or the spare bedrooms, to be more precise – but they don’t match the rest of the trim in the house which was updated prior to our buying it. We thought it would be nice to finish the update. Note: I use the term “we” quite loosely, but let’s not quibble over details. The fact is that left to my own devices, I would prefer to lean on my Lazy Gene (but misplaced it during the move).

So anyway, there’s work to do, although it is work of a different sort. I now have the time to practice doing things I’ve not done much of, and that is a nice change of pace, although the pace is quite glacial and needs to be timed with a calendar rather than a stop watch (and I slow down even more if anyone stops to watch me – I’m not fond of having an audience when playing with sharp objects like saws and drills, nails and hammers, and the like).

One of the pleasant things about doing my own honey-do woodwork is I can admire the greater skills of genuine carpenters. The good news is it was professionals who did the public spaces in our home, and the areas upon which I have been toiling away are and will be hidden away from the rest of the world (except maybe horror house movie makers – here’s a shout out to Hollywood).

That’s as it should be. While I know I shall improve over time (gaining experience along the way), I also know I will never be perfect. That job, thankfully, belongs to God.

In the meantime, I continued to measure multiple times and by the time I got to the last bit of trim, I had gotten the angle on doing miters a mite better and faster. And where my splices are sloppy, I have discovered the joy of wood putty (but I’ll save that story for another time).

Until then, enjoy your summer. May you never be board (sic) here in this, God’s valley. I know I won’t be!

When the Bough Breaks

People are what they believe – Anton Chekhov

I was outside watering my tomatoes when I heard what I was sure was a rabid grizzly bear beating the bushes in my neighbor’s yard. It’s hard to describe a sound, but suffice it to say that if you have seen any wild grizzly movies on the silver screen (Night of the Grizzly and The Edge come immediately to mind) you will know the ominous sound of a beast single-mindedly wanting to have you for breakfast – or dinner.

Well, that was the sound I heard over in the corner of the yard as I was tending to my veggies (which are doing very nicely, I should add). I looked up from my hydrating duties to see what was causing such a crunchy commotion just in time to see a mighty bough break off from the neighbor’s fir tree and come crashing down onto the fence separating our two properties.

The good news is that the bough was crib-less, so no “rock-a-bye” babies fell as the incident unfolded. Also, while it had been my intention to water plants and bushes where the tree limb fell, I hadn’t gotten that far, so this baby did not have his noggin cracked by the aforementioned falling bough.

After confirming that I was still in one piece and whole in both life and limb (and heart continued beating within my own trunk – although it wasn’t beating about the bush), I went and got my wife to tell her what had happened (after all, she is the branch manager of our home) and the two of us trundled over to our neighbors to let them know about the damage to the fence we shared.

I thought the tree belonged to him, but as it turns out, it belongs to yet another neighbor who, while friendly enough, declined any responsibility. “The tree is on my side of the fence,” he said, “but it was planted by someone else and is actually on the property line, so it’s not mine.”

Ah, who says good fences (or walls) make for good neighbors? Some knot-head, no doubt.

Anyway, it didn’t matter to me who the tree belonged to and, the fact is, the damage to the fence was minimal. My neighbor and I took a couple of saws and loppers to the offending yard waste and laid waste to the trespassing vegetation. We chopped and lopped everything down to size in about an hour, and then loaded everything into my pickup, hauled it to the landfill and dumped it. A few days later we replaced the broken stringer and reinstalled the fence boards and, voila, all was made whole once again.

I do worry the tree will continue to shed limbs, for it does not appear to be a healthy tree. It has a number of dead branches holding on for no good reason except to keep the world in suspense. There hadn’t been any wind the day that one big bough broke, but I give gravity credit for its fall. It had no choice; it was the Law (of gravity).

I won’t lose any sleep over the matter. No one was injured. The incident gave me a chance to get to know my next-door neighbor a lot better as we worked together. I got to at least meet another neighbor I had not known at all, and I suspect I will get to know him and his wife better as the law of gravity continues to be rigorously enforced in our neighborhood. He may deal with his tree; he may not. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The tree is sick, to be sure, but it is also short enough it is highly unlikely it will convert our home into a tree-house any time soon.

I will admit that fences help delineate property lines, but I wonder if they truly do promote neighborliness. It took a broken fence to discover who my true neighbor is.

A fence may give the illusion of security, but I dare say it’s only an illusion. Not only did a mindless fir crush it, but squirrels cross it all the time as they plunder Nature’s Market for their daily bread!

I’m glad God broke the fence. I’m especially glad it was God and not a grizzly here in this, God’s valley.

Naught, Knot, and Not

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. Will Rogers

In the Bible, we are called to be truthful.  I have always found it interesting that the commandment addressing honesty is couched in the negative: “Thou shalt not bear false witness”.

Why not put a positive spin on it?  Why not say, “Thou shalt bear true witness”?

Perhaps it is this focus on negatives – the THOU SHALT NOTs – that causes some people to see religion in a negative light – seeing religion as a culture of NOTs.

Thou shalt NOT bear false witness; thou shalt NOT have any other gods before me; thou shalt NOT covet thy neighbor’s wife, livestock, or other precious commodities; etc.

It is the NOTs, I suspect, that gets us all knotted up, and yet it seems to me that there is a value in the negatives. Is it the “nots” that make us “naughty?”

Many of us go through life thinking of ourselves as honest men and women.  When the clerk at the store gives us back too much change, most of us will point it out and correct them.  There are those who don’t, of course. Some will rationalize their dishonesty and their misbehavior – blaming the stores for short-changing them in the past, or making too high a profit, or more than able to “eat” the mistake. But a lie is a lie, and theft is theft, and a mistake should be corrected whenever possible.

For the most part, most of us are honest and will do the right thing if we notice an error, whether the mistake is in our favor or not.  We “do unto others as we would have others do unto us.”  That’s the Golden Rule; it is known and expressed in any number of world religions and philosophies; and it is a rule that makes our world a better place to live when practiced.

Ironically, it is our basic honesty that often blinds us to the complete truth about ourselves.  We are basically good (and I really do believe that), but in our very goodness arises a certain complacency about our true condition. We are good, but not perfect. Our motives may be good, but our results are sometimes flawed.

A while back I was driving out along Ennis Lake and saw a woman walking her bicycle on the gravel road. I slowed down and asked if she needed help (thinking she might have a flat tire or some other issue). She assured me she was fine, so I continued on my way.

Now, I would love to say I offered help out of the complete goodness of my heart, but the fact is the parable of the Good Samaritan was the listed reading for the upcoming Sunday, and I did NOT want to be identified as the “priest who passed by on the other side.” I genuinely wanted to help (if needed), but I was also protecting my fragile ego!

Isaiah tells us that all our righteousness is as filthy rags when compared to God.  Is it possible that we are content to think of ourselves as good, rest on our laurels, and not dig deeper out of fear of what we will find?

Is it possible that the commandments are put in the negative form precisely because our temptation is to bear false witness?  Not just about what we have seen or heard, but in what we have done or thought in the secrecy of our own heart?

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

It is often out of fear and shame that we hide the truth from our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves, but there is no hiding the truth from God.  Further, I have learned over the years that being honest with our friends (at least with those who are trustworthy) – removing the masks of hypocrisy we wear – allows us the freedom to be more honest, and greater opportunity to be the kind of people that put a smile on God’s face.

To be human is to be flawed. True. But we are loved by God, just the same – and called to love one another, quirks and all.

That’s the truth – at least as I see it here in this, God’s valley.

The Scale of Life

“I waited patiently upon the LORD; he stooped to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay ... he put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” (Psalm 40)

I sometimes lose things.

In a world where people have lost their lives; in a world where people have lost their jobs or health insurance; in a world where people have lost children to drugs, or marriages to infidelity, or health to bad genes, bad decisions, or bad luck; in a world where people have lost so much that is of true and enduring value, the loss of a trinket or misplaced doodad is pretty low on the scale of things.

If I have lost some “thing” and have time to look for it, I’m blessed, for I’ve lost so much more over the years – and I know it. Thank God! Without loss, how would we appreciate what we have?

I cannot speak for the rest of creation, of course, as the only things of which I have any knowledge are my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But what I do know is that when I have a problem of any sort – major, minor, or something in between – I can almost always trace its genesis back to one spot: me.

It’s always possible someone took off with what’s missing, but highly unlikely. Like most inanimate objects, it did not walk off on its own. But the odds are good it got moved around in some mysterious shuffle and will almost certainly be found – because it has been my experience that I’ll find the errant object and cry, “Ah, that’s right; I put it there. Now I remember!”

None of that is important, of course. The reason this grates on me is because it violates an image I have of myself of being a relatively competent, careful, and attentive person. I want to scream to the rafters, “I do not lose things,” and yet if I pause before shouting, I can recall countless times I have misplaced items, or forgotten where I was going, what I was doing, or what I had intended to say in a conversation.

It is called “being human.” I don’t want to be human, of course; I want to have what God has: a perfect memory and complete power (and maybe an adoring fan-base). Sadly, I am not God; no one is.

When I get into a pickle, it is of my own doing. I may have help along the way, but I’m generally able to get stuck in the muck and mire of life without anyone else’s help.

So the first thing I must do is acknowledge and accept my very human limitations. They do not excuse lapses of good judgment or carelessness, but they go a long ways towards explaining what it is that’s happening. As neat and tidy as I want life to be, it is messy and unmanageable, I’m stuck with it, and there is nothing I can do about it.

I am, in a sense, powerless, but I am not alone. There is a God to whom I cry out when I am in despair.

I don’t mean when I’ve misplaced my glasses or bookmarks; that would be a perfectly silly waste of God’s time. God is with us, in us, and around us a hundred percent of the time. The Bible is clear enough that there is no hole deep enough or deed dark enough that God cannot find us, hold us, or hear us; so to beg God’s intervention for a “thing” just seems irreverent to me.

I believe God is with us in the pit, and that God not only knows the way out of the pit; I believe God IS the way out of the pit. Greater is the One who sticks to us than is the schmuck who’s stuck to the muck!

Psalm 40 reminds us that while we may be good at walking “eyes wide open” into desolate pits and slimy sludge, God is good at seeing, hearing, and patiently rescuing us.

That’s why I look to God; he is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen in this, God’s valley; and I think God’s worth singing about – don’t you?