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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
November 22, 2024
Feast Day of Clive Staples Lewis
Reading: I Peter 1:3-9
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith-- being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire-- may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
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“We begged God to leave the world, and he has, at our request. A gaping hole remains. We continue to pray to that hole – to Nothingness. There is no answer. We are angry and disappointed. Is this proof of the non-existence of God?... People have always known, unless they were willfully blind, that history is a series of accidents; its fabric is woven from tiny chance events. This means that if there is any plan or reason in history, it can only be God’s plan and God’s reason. None of us know what they are, we can only believe in them.”
Leszek Kolakowski: Is God Happy?
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
If you were pressed by someone to explain your faith in God, what would you say? Where would you start?
Most of the time, an explanation is intended to grant legitimacy to something by providing an objective rationale; reasons that everyone would find acceptable. Under the weight of this responsibility, much ink has been spilled by those who have felt the need to make Christianity a comprehensive system by which the world can be properly understood. That’s an attractive idea. It’s in line with those who want to do the same thing but by means of science – or, progressively now, through digital technology.
We trust that at the root of everything there exists some discernible order that determines “all that was and is and is to be.” If you doubt the ubiquity of this conviction, just browse through all the titles in bookstores that (at long last) purport to have discovered how everything works. (I’m most comically intrigued by the profusion of books that explain how, apart from our common experience, there is no such thing as free will. Every action and reaction among us is already and absolutely determined. It’s willful blindness par excellence.) With regard to faith, then, it’s easy to get entangled in conversations where someone insists that if God exists, faith must be a system of belief that answers all questions and fixes all problems.
Why do we put such trust in comprehensive systems, especially when the whole tale of history includes countless accidents that have no explanation? Leszek Kolakowski saw this clearly. As did Peter, though in a very different way. The opening verses of his letter don’t make any attempt to provide an explanation for faith – or, for that matter, for an understanding of the world or history. Instead, Peter positioned his readers before God, as those who were being addressed by God and who were being included in the salvific work of God. How this would be done, he doesn’t say. Nor when. It is simply the promise that will, mysteriously, come to fruition. At root, there is no order upon which we can depend. For everything that is is secondary to the Creator who brought it about. Peter’s verses serve to loose us from what we want most, not to leave us with Nothing, but to show us who we can love most – not a system but someone who alone can make all our life a rejoicing.
Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen
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