Waves of sand

Luke 13:10–17

When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

I had a dream a few weeks ago that has already served me a few times as a touchstone. In the dream, a young man is in a desert, and waves of sand are sweeping over him as if they were water. He has to stay upright and pay attention so he won't be smothered.

What are my waves?

.... the thought of an overwhelming problem in the world or in the life of someone I love .... an impulsive idea that seems to need my immediate attention .... a tangled situation that I don't know how to solve .....

In her sermon yesterday, our vicar pointed out that the bent-over woman doesn't ask Jesus for healing. Jesus sees the woman and heals her, and now she's able to straighten up. So that's what she does.

And here I am, able to straighten up, after many episodes of Jesus' healing in my life over the years. I'm not helpless when the waves come, so before acting, I'm trying consider whether maybe the idea is not quite as urgent and brilliant as it seems; maybe the problem I'm obsessing about is not actually mine to solve.

It will pass. Let it go.

A maddeningly long wait

Luke 12:32–40

It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.

Okay, so...
Servant = me
My master = Jesus
House = the world
House's owner = whatever's calling the shots around here

What does it look like to be ready? What helps me stay ready, even if it's a maddeningly long wait?

It helps me that Jesus predicts a maddeningly long wait. Thank you, Jesus, for being realistic. It's not a surprise to you, I guess, that this world is a dark room in which people seem to be stumbling all over each other. But someday the door will open, and light will break in from the outside. That's how I picture it, anyway.

Staying with Jesus

John 19:38–42

[My paraphrase...] Two wealthy men who've been pretending not to be Jesus' disciples come forward to claim his dead body, prepare it for burial, and lay it in a tomb.

I've been working my way through the gospel of John, and for round about a year I've been mired in the crucifixion. Jesus' willingness to suffer astonishes and puzzles me something awful, because the implications are really frightening. Back in March or April I wrote the following question on the bookmark that I keep in my breviary:

Christ is not driven by a need to avoid suffering. What does life look like, knowing this?

What did going forward with life look like for these two men who had just watched Jesus willingly endure suffering?

For one thing, they stayed with him, tolerating the discomfort of a sight, sound, smell, and touch that just about everyone else wanted to get the hell away from.

I'm struck by the tenderness of the scene. It must have taken them hours. They probably washed blood and sweat off of Jesus' body. Was what they did women's work? It was intimate in the extreme. They stayed with Jesus.