Day 7 of 365 (No Need to be in Your Face)

A friend of mine gave me a book entitled, “Jesus Calling”. I, even though you probably have sensed have some ambivalence in my faith (I refer to myself as a Zen Lutheran), like the book. 

 Today’s topic was the tenderness of the Divine. The author states that it is weakness that the Divine reaches out with the tenderest of love, something akin to the benevolent parent’s love. The first of the spiritual quotes comes from Psalm 46 and I quote verses 1-4:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. 

 I have always liked this Psalm even from my days growing up in that small town Baptist church. The idea that despite tsunamis, blizzards and earthquakes that we have an “ever-present help in trouble,” is comforting. We have a short time on this world. Comfort is hard to come by. If based on this promise people act to assist the homeless, the jailed, the hungry, the oppressed and any other person in need believing they are the instruments of the Divine then it is a better world isn’t it? 

 At a Billy Bragg concert the issue of faith came up. Billy always the talker was clear that he was a humanist and did not buy into the concepts of an afterlife, etc. Mr. Bragg specifically would not countenance a frontal attack on religion or the religious. He stated that when he walked picket lines, went into homeless shelters and soup kitchens the people you knew would always be there were people of faith. He stated if faith could bring about that kind of goodness he would not go out of his way to attack or insult believers. I am with him.