Finding Peace

In the attached Sesame Street youtube clip, Herry and Grover are trying to explain the difference between here and there to.  The little pink character is having trouble understanding the words.  It was “here” and he wanted to go “there”, but when he got to the place he wanted to go it wasn’t “there” anymore, it was now “here” and the original “here” was now “there”.  When you think about it in those terms it is a little confusing.

 

Dr. Seuss told of a similar dilemma with the “Star Bellied Sneetches” .  They were very proud of the stars on their bellies, because many Sneetches didn’t have stars on their bellies, and so the stars made the “Star Bellied Sneetches”  very special and envied.    A young entrepreneur came to town one day with a special machine and for only a small amount of money the plain bellied Sneetches could get a star tattooed on their bellies making them part of the “In” crowd.  While this was popular with the plain bellied Sneetches the star bellied Sneetches were angry.  So………………they paid the same enterprising fellow a handsome fee to remove their stars so that they could be different again. 

We always seem to want what we don’t have.  Dave Ramsey has summed up much of the world with this quote: “We buy things we don’t even need with money we don’t even have to impress people we don’t even know”

In Philippians Paul tells the story of being in Jail.  He shares that he is OK either way. If he lives it is good, if he dies it is good.  He can see the benefits of both. He is not dependent on something external to create his peace and joy, he has already found it in his relationship with Christ.  Many of us look there for what is already here.

Strength To Love

 

Strength to Love is the title of a book of sermons by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I have been reading it this week in my reflection and prayer time.  I have also been watching a number of youtube videos about Dr. King. One in particular I have included. It is worth watching. It shares his story of the weight and pressure that he was under and the strength he found to press on.

One of the sermons in "Strength to Love" is called Love in Action.  Dr. King nails the problem that we humans face:

"One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against our- selves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of those principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage."

In the sermon, written while he is in prison, Dr. King resists the temptation to lash out and attack, but very graciously claims that the struggles facing the world is not a result of its badness, but its blindness.  It is not that people are bad, they are just blind to truth.  "...they were not wicked men. On the contrary, they were decent and dedicated men. But they were victims of spiritual and intellectual blindness.  They knew not what they did."

On the cross, Jesus also doesn't accuse humanity of being bad, just blind (Luke 23:34) and asks God to forgive us.  Is that how you react when someone wrongs you?  Do you spend any amount of time trying to understand your adversary?  Most of us just go into strike mode. Most of us just scream and holler at the injustices we face.

Grace is amazing when we see it on display.  I am thankful that our country and her leaders saw fit to set aside a day to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  It is worth our time to consider what he taught and how he lived.

 

the scream

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The painting is called The Scream.  It was painted by Edvard Munch, in his diary entry headed, 22 January 1892, he described his inspiration for the image:

“One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.”

The phrase above that haunts me is “I sensed a scream passing through nature.”  Do you sense the same thing?  Did you sense a scream when you heard about the girl in India, the plight of the Syrian people, the school in Newtown Conn., the ambush of the N.Y. firefighters?  There is a scream passing through nature in 2013 just as it was in 1892.

Notice the shadowy figure leaning over the rail in the background of the painting? He/she conveys a sense of despair and hopelessness.  Many times we wonder how we can go on.  We find ourselves with head in hand wondering how we got to this point and what on earth we can do about it.

1 Kings 19 tells the story of Elijah. He is hearing the screams of his day. Elijah is hiding in a cave. He doesn’t know if he can go on. He asks God to end his life. God tells him to stand at the entrance to the cave where he witnesses a deafening wind, an earthquake, a great fire, and finally a gentle whisper.  God says I wasn’t in the wind, earthquake or fire.  God says I was in the whisper. The great scream of nature is overcome by a whisper from God.  I like that. 

God is whispering to you and me just as he did to Elijah. God is calling our name. God is providing hope. God is helping us find the way forward.  The trick is finding, no, making the time to listen.  Finding the places in our lives where we can hear the whisper.

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