Repeat after me: Gracious and loving God / help us / to trust even more / in your faithfulness / and your grace. Amen.
[There was a summer when I was working up in Washington state and Heather and I were in love. Funny story: Goodbye to Heather in Seattle, lost ATM card, snuck into campground, sprinklers, mountains welcoming me back.]
This is a fascinating reading to me because it utilizes nature in a positive role: the role of the sky-full of stars as an illustration of all the blessing, that is before Sarah and Abraham...right smack in the midst of their pain, sorrow and fear.
I’ve found that in Scripture (as in life), “nature” -- animals, plants, whole biomes and ecosystems -- can fluctuate back and forth: It is so often a source and certainly a place for evil or fear or temptation (as we saw last week in the Garden of Eden) and just plain danger… Jesus is tempted out in nature, in the desert...snakes and storms and lions and the valley of the shadow of death -- nature can often mean trouble in the Bible.
Same in life. We teach our kids all the time about nature: “Watch out! Be careful!” From the creepy crawlies to bears to falling out of trees. Even the sun is a danger, as we lather ourselves up to go outside, as we tiptoe into the great ocean, afraid of what could happen. It’s a big bad world out there in “the wilds”, out there in nature.
But other times -- more often, I hope, but I’m not sure these days -- nature can heal. Nature can comfort. Nature can refresh or reinvigorate (shared a story about that for me)
...and nature can teach...
Richard Louv, local San Diegan, writes and speaks often about the healing effects of nature...and how we’ve lost track of that. He coined the phrase “Nature Deficiency Disorder” and talks about how staring at a screen shuts down almost all of our awareness. “Nature time,” he writes, “can literally bring us to our senses.”
Now when I talk about “our senses” -- I am talking about our five senses -- sound, touch, taste, smell, sight (as Richard Louv was). But I’m also talking about that sense of the divine, that sense of the ineffable, that sense of eternity, that sense of overwhelming blessing. So often we are so blind to that, to those billions of stars in the sky.
Abram and Sarai too were blinded by sadness, fear, and -- in a way -- reality, so that they couldn’t see God’s greater blessing, until it was imaged by nature, by a night full of stars.
Have you ever seen stars like that? You can’t really describe the experience. I mean we can all imagine a sky full of stars, but until you’ve been completely entranced on a crisp night under a billion stars, sitting in an old lawn chair or laying in a warm sleeping bag, you really can’t get it.
This such a great scene! Abraham and Sarah are overwhelmed with grief, with despair, with fear: far from their home, no children...or even friends for that matter. Have you ever felt like they do: overwhelmed with sadness, with pain, with fear?
And they’re in a tent.
Such a great scene! In a tent you’re supposedly protected. In a tent you can get things in perspective, got your meal, got your bed, maybe you’ve got a small family next to you. Your world is all right there, immediate, visible.
But something’s coming up short. There’s this aching in their hearts, as we too have experienced aching in our hearts in many and various ways. Maybe your aching is exactly the same as Abraham and Sarah: unable to have children, sad and far from home. Or maybe it’s something else. [pause]
On one hand maybe you’ve got everything you supposedly need: food, shelter, work, friends, beautiful San Diego skies. And yet there’s this nagging emptiness. Or fear. Or anxiety. Or sadness. Or despair. Something keeping you up at night.
This is such a great scene...because exactly the opposite of what we would think safety looks like, of what we think the good life looks like, happens: GOD CALLS ABRAHAM OUT OF THE TENT. And suddenly he is completely exposed. (Great word: ex-posed. “out of position”, 15c. “to leave without shelter or defense”)
How is God calling you “out of the tent” these days? How are you exposed, “out of position”?
We don’t know what’s going to happen. But there are stars out there that we can’t always see. There are blessings before us, and all around us that we so often miss because of the thin and flimsy fabric of our tents.
God’s calling us to step out, to step outside. Nature is not all bad -- in fact it can even comfort and heal us. God’s calling us out of position, out of our comfort...to be comforted even more. We don’t know what’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen, but we have a God who does, and who loves, and who laughs, and who blesses.
These “Fireside Chats” have really been fun…
And a recurring theme to so many of our stories has been God’s surprise. How many of our stories are about us in the tent, thinking we were lining everything up as it should be, planning and strategizing and thinking we’re controlling the direction of our lives. And yet, God surprises us time and again with blessing, even in the face of immense tragedy and heartbreak and pain and loss. Complicated childhoods, complicated marriages and break-ups, complicated health histories or job-tracks, or children with complications. All of it, very real, and yet there’s God all along -- still blessing, still loving us, still journeying with us. It’s funny how often we’ve been reflecting at these Fireside Chats, in retrospect: “Oh, there was God.”
Friends in Christ, the majestic mountains of God’s grace are welcoming us back. The stars are coving us like a blanket of peace. All this is to say: God’s never left us, God’s still with us, and God’s got so much blessing still in store for us. All this is to say, God’s got us.
We just struggle to trust that truth.
But hear that truth once again this day, friends… [pause] see that truth once again this day, [pointing to the Table] taste, touch and smell that eternal, ineffable, divine truth once again this day, in Jesus name. AMEN.
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