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God is good, we say. Even when we risk opening our eyes, God is forever good.
In our walk with God, we will fall; we will be embarrassed, but if, as Heschel says, “embarrassment is the beginning of faith,” then perhaps we can and will handle our embarrassments with a feeling of hope and purpose.
At the end of the day, maybe it is loving God enough to love ourselves which will ultimately put the Empire in its place, by taking away its arrogant assumption that it is greater than our God.
Self-forgiveness becomes the embodiment of the scripture, “Therefore if any person is in Christ, he (she) is a new person. Old things are passed away. Behold, all thing are become new!”
In the aftermath of the shooting in Las Vegas, we are hearing, again, the words “our thoughts and prayers are with you.”
We are being bombarded by storms, both physical and political, that are ripping us from our berths of comfort and familiarity and thrusting us into a space of mystery and the unknown.
God’s boots within us has brought us to this day, and God’s boots within us will be there the next time we find ourselves in the middle of a restless and angry sea.
Walking the “Bridge of Sighs” pushes our fears out of us; while they are inside of us, they kill us and steal our capacity to trust God and see how God works, even and especially in times of dark and tumultuous times.
The challenge for us all is to not only ask for doors to be open but to ask for the strength and genuine faith it will take to walk through once we see the open door in front of us.
If we face what we must, our souls might very well open as well, and only God knows how our lives will bend toward the presence of the God who desires that we thrive in this life, and not walk blindly, not giving our spirits an opportunity to be truly free.
