Advent 2b.02   December 4, 2005

Life has a way of getting hard.
So how does God respond when we are hurting?
When God told Isaiah to speak for him, God said,

        “Comfort, O Comfort my people . . .”
But when God spells out the comfort more specifically,
         it doesn’t sound entirely good.

It goes like this:

         “All people are grass,
         their constancy is like the flower of the field.
         The grass withers, the flower fades . . . ;
                  but the word of our God stands forever.”

It’s a reminder of the transitoriness of things,
          a reminder that we are mortal,
          that all our accomplishments are sand castles.

The most precious part of life, the personal relationships,
         according to Isaiah are especially shaky.
Human “constancy,” he says, “is like the flower of the field.”
People are the most precious things in our lives,
         but people are subject to shifting moods and madnesses.
We are entirely apt to fail and disappoint each other.

The odd thing is that once we let the idea of impermanence sink in,
         there is something strangely comforting about it.
Once we get past our fixation on setting everything in stone
         the way we like it,
                 the flow of life becomes curiously pleasurable.

Impermanence takes the pressure off.
We work so hard at getting things just right.
We are like concrete workers trying
         to get the concrete smoothed out just so,
                  before it hardens.

The fact that it’s never going to harden,
         means we don’t have to fret so much
                 about how it happens to be right now.

We notice, for example, that we are at this moment unhappy.
Well, unhappiness isn’t great. It’s just that – unhappy.
But we can make our unhappiness a hundred times worse
        with anxiety that we will always be unhappy
                unless we do just exactly the right thing.
Our we can make ourselves more miserable
        with despair that we will always be unhappy
                no matter what we do.

Neither is the case.
If our supposedly concrete situations are always in flux,
        our thoughts and feelings change even faster.
It’s all just emotional weather. It comes. It goes.
So life becomes a matter of changing seasons.

In Spring, we fertilize the grass. Come Summer, we mow it.
In Fall, we rake the leaves.
In Winter, if we live where such a thing happens,
        we shovel the snow.
Then it’s time to fertilize the grass again. No fuss.
Our life will have it’s ups and downs.
And there is a comfort in just acknowledging that.

But the message of comfort doesn’t stop here.
Isaiah goes on to say that in the midst of all this change,

         “the word of our God will stand forever.”
“The word of God” doesn’t mean the Bible.
In Isaiah’s day, there was no Bible.

“The word of God” means God’s active presence
         in our midst, God here in our lives

                 -- as opposed to God in Heaven.

“The word of God stands forever”
        means that God is always right here in the very midst
                 of the changes and chances of this life.
God is the silent partner, sharing all our experiences

        – no matter how mundane.

What kind of a God is this who dwells
        in the midst of our ever-shifting experience?
What kind of a God lives so near?

Isaiah answers with the image of a shepherd.

        “He will feed his flock...
        He will gather the lambs in his arms,
                and carry them in his bosom,
                and gently lead the mother sheep.”

But how does God do that? How does God comfort and care for us?
I can only speak from my own experience.

Not so long ago, I had reached the end of my rope.
I had an emotional melt-down utterly unbecoming
         someone who’s supposed to teach spirituality.
But then God stepped into it.
I sat down to meditate and found God there
         in the stillness between each breath I drew.

When dark moods overcame me,
         I called on God’s name, chopped up my moods
                   with short little prayers, and little by little,
                           the clouds dispersed.
Out of nowhere, a flash of perspective
         made my troubles seem, it not small, at least manageable.
God sent me friends who prayed for me.

Then one afternoon as I was driving along,
         I noticed the most surprising thing.
I was, at that moment, actually happy.
Not euphoric, not manic, just quietly happy.

What can one make of that?
From real misery, to genuine happiness,
         in just a few days with no real change of situation.
You could call it a mood swing.
You could say I just “got over it.”

But when it happens in the midst of prayer and meditation
         and the support of people of faith,
                 I call it the Word of God.

Isaiah says we can count on God’s Word,
         God’s silent presence always here to restore us to life.
“The grass withers,” Isaiah says, “the flower fades,
         but the word of our God will stand forever.”

This makes all the difference for how we live.
We don’t by-pass, skip, or dismiss ordinary life.
We are here to be the grass that withers, the flowers that fade.

We are to live fully, enjoying life’s beauty and suffering its pain.
We can live all the more boldly
          if we aren’t trying to tie life down into something secure.
It just isn’t capable of that.

Our security is in God’s word which comforts and restores us
         when ordinary life has smashed against the rocks.
We tap into God’s word through prayer and sacraments,
         through life in the community of faith,
         and through pausing from time to time
                  just to notice God behind the scenes.
We notice God as the stillness between each breath,
         the silence between each sound.
If we attend carefully to God,
         we will find the comfort we need.

                                                          Amen.