Living in the Spirit
June 20, 2021
Scripture Reading: Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’
In grade school, I had to memorize Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If. The first line skittered through my mind as I read the scripture quoted above:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
I no longer can quote the whole poem, but that part stuck with me. Our society has wasted a lot of energy in recent years, losing our heads and blaming the problem identified on someone else, not ourselves. The effort that should be targeted at problem-solving is lost to deadlock. We are stuck in a societal gridlock like a traffic jam that does not move. The Beatles’ Nowhere Man also comes to mind.
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. . .
He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see*
Jesus modeled in his life stepping out of deadlocks, analyzing problems, and addressing them. He called us to continue this work. Jesus never lost his head, nor did he just see what he wanted to see. He did get angry at least once when he drove the money changers out of the temple. That anger was targeted at people who claimed to follow God and reaped profits from their temple work. Greed always seems to be lurking around every corner.
We do not have either the time or energy to get caught in gridlock or losing our heads. We are in the fragile early stages of recovering from a pandemic in our country that is still raging worldwide. A third of our nation is suffering from severe drought and a depleting water supply. An estimated 1.4 million people in the USA are classified as living in poverty or just one emergency from poverty. Now is the time to seek God’s guidance in responding and investing our time and energy in addressing the challenges we face.
Prayer: Lord, forgive us for not seeing what we need to see and not addressing what we need to address. Direct us in loving as you modeled love in the world. Amen.
*See at https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/887/
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.