You Are Not In Control

It began with a cough on Tuesday. By Wednesday I was feeling worse. By Thursday, I had a fever, canceled all my commitments, and stayed in bed. The dreaded flu! I usually get a flu shot, but never got around to it this year.

I say to God, “Really? You let me get sick just before Holy Week? The busiest time of the year?” And I hear Her respond, “You would rather you were ill during Holy Week?” That quiets me as I humbly offer apologies and thanks. He has a point.

In the meantime, with my poor fevered brain only at half-mast, I must rely on the wisdom of others this week. Upon hearing that I was sick, a kind parishioner emailed me: “there is always some kind of lesson that comes out of times like this.  The obvious one is: we are not ultimately in control of our lives. I was going to wish you a speedy recovery, but the truth of the matter is that the flu is going to last as long as it wants to last.... So rather than wish you a speedy recovery, I wish you a blessed and fruitful sickness.”

What an unusual blessing, and yet it warms my heart! She is right. We save ourselves a lot of grief by accepting what is, accepting our limits, and learning what we can where we are placed, even if it doesn’t match our plans. So I am doing my best to ensure a fruitful sickness, even amidst the tissues and aches. This I do primarily by counting my blessings and recognizing that I am not in control – God is. So this day I wish you all blessedness and fruitfulness wherever God has placed you in this moment.

Epiphany Blessings

Throughout my ministry, I have been the privileged confidante of concerns and fears of my parishioners. There was the elderly couple whose grandson was a drug addict. How do they save him? There was the empty nester couple who son transitioned to a woman. Will their friends at church ever talk to them again? There was the grandmother who worried that her grandchildren weren’t being baptized. Will they go to hell?

Today, January 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany to honor the revelation of Jesus, of salvation, to the whole world. The wise men who came to worship the Christ child were not Jewish, but Gentile. Traditionally they have been understood as coming from the three known continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, thereby representing the whole world. Epiphany is a recognition that God isn’t sending a Messiah just for the Israelites, but for all people. At the time, this was unprecedented! People were convinced down to their bones that they knew who God loved and who God didn’t. Epiphany is an “ah-ha” moment. Maybe God has a bigger plan and love for humanity than we sometimes realize. Maybe our little boxes of who is in and who is out don’t matter to God..

In this New Year, may we all have many “ah-ha” moments of seeing the love of God at work in our lives and those around us, even those whose choices, or intrinsic natures, are very different from ours.

(image above by J. C. Leyendecker)