These are hard times

Living in hard times is nothing new. If you look back on history (and you need not go far), people have been presented with awful, horrific situations as bad or worse than what’s happening in modern day America, since the beginning of time. Floods, fires, pandemic, inequity, misogyny, racism, economic insecurity, climate change, partisan politics, to name a few. There are an abundance of examples of this in the Bible as well and on the morning after the news of another blow to 2020, the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I found myself looking to God for answers to my biggest, burning question: How can you send so much grief and angst to Your people in one year?!

Months ago, when life was “normal”, it was my daily routine to read the day’s scripture and reflections about the passages. It was grounding and kept me in the idea, that with God, there are reasons for everything that happens and we have to trust we will be shown the way forward. Oh, how sweet and innocent those times seem now. It’s not easy to stay in this mentality these days. But today, I reached back into my toolbox and pulled up today’s reading and it struck me because it was the same reading my son had for his first school assignment in Theology this week and I had just read it yesterday – Matthew 13 – about seeds sown on rocky soil, in thorns and in fertile soil. It ended with “whoever has ears ought to hear”.

The version we are reading today is Luke’s and his goes on to explain exactly what this parable means and how we react to the world is based on which kinds of seeds we are sowing (apparently mine have fallen among the thorns). It reminds me that I need to turn over these feelings of loss and rage (as RBG’s iconic life is turned into an opportunity by Trump and his minions, yet again) and believe in something higher than myself. It’s not easy, being human, but we were never meant to do it on our own.

Whoever has ears, let them hear.

MC