With Arms Held Out Wide--May 11, 2021

With Arms Held Out Wide--May 11, 2021

"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways. As in my anger I swore, They will not enter my rest'." [Hebrews 3:7-11]

It is a damn shame to take someone who loves you for granted--especially if the someone is God.

And yet, it really is breathtaking how much of the story of God and human beings is the Mobius strip looping of God being good, gracious, and generous to us, and us being selfish jerks in response.  We have a way of seeing the goodness of God, shrugging our shoulders with an unimpressed "Meh" kind of response, and thinking we can do better on our own... only to end up in terrible trouble and to need God to bail us out again.... and then we start it all over again.

The writer of Hebrews knows that repeating story all too well, and rehearses it here by quoting from the Psalms.  In fact, it's interesting just how often the Bible calls us out on this habit of ours and names it.  The original stories of the wilderness wanderings are found in the Torah--in the saga that runs from Exodus through Deuteronomy, and in those stories, God is faithful and the people are basically stinkers.  "We don't want the food you're giving us!"  "We don't like the way you're taking us!" "We don't like a God who is invisible and beyond our control--we we want one we can make out of shiny metal!"  "We want to go back to slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt where we selectively remember that it was better!"  "We don't want you being our God anymore!"  Over and over these kinds of complaints and doubts and criticisms of God's goodness get lobbed at God, and over and over the people get themselves in trouble when they try to make a way on their own without God.  And so, over and over, God shows up to heal, to deliver, and to start over with them.  And then, hundreds of years later, the poets who crafted the Psalms would retell those stories that way, and remind the people of their perpetual fickleness.  And it's those psalms that the writer of Hebrews picks up on here, as a way of saying, "We've been down that road before--let's not go down it again!"

That's what this is all about: a wise voice of faith looking at the wreckage in our past and saying, "Yes, God forgave us and started over with us in the past when we turned away from God, but that doesn't mean we should turn away again now!  Let's just stick close to God this time, and skip the part where we take God for granted!"

And honestly, that's a brilliant idea.  If someone forgives you for having taken them for granted and being a jerk toward them, the right thing to do is to stop taking them for granted ever again, and instead to appreciate the love that didn't walk away even when you bailed out on it.  What if we took that seriously when it comes to us and God?

Because here's the thing: God has never bailed out on us, and God never will.  God sure does put up with our flaking out, and God certainly  has to bear the heartache of our taking God for granted.  But when we do, God remains faithful, and it would be an utter shame to shrug that love away with our indifference.  Maybe today's a day both to look back at the places where God carried each of us all our lives long, even despite our own ornery selfishness, and also to look around right now at God's presence with in this day and this place.  Maybe, just maybe, God is in this moment right now with a good direction to lead us in, with a strong love to give, and with arms held out wide open for you.  And maybe this is the moment not to walk away from it (to chase some other lesser love that won't be faithful to us), but instead to stick close to the love of God.

Today, let's be intentionally aware, deliberately mindful, of the goodness of God, right here and now, so that we will not walk away from the love that doesn't bail out on us.

O God, keep being your faithful self with us--and make us to see your goodness and stay close.