The Way
AM Psalm 37:1-18 • PM Psalm 37:19-42
Isa. 45:5-17 • Eph. 5:15-33 • Mark 4:21-34
I am writing this on January 7th, the day after what the pundits are calling the Day of Insurrection, the day on which our Capitol was stormed by a mob bent on overturning a presidential election. On that very same day, approximately 3900 Americans lost their lives due to the coronavirus pandemic, more than were lost on 9/11. These are dark days indeed, perhaps the darkest I have observed in all my years. But what can we do in response? How can we correct? How can we restore? The task appears to call for Herculean efforts. Are we up to it?
Today’s readings tell us that God has given us the blueprint, and it is a simple yet miraculous one, one that is within reach of all of us, regardless of our abilities. What a comfort!
Each of the passages in today’s reading is utilitarian. The fruits which we desire—justice, peace, love, true community—are best attained by walking in the way shown to us by Jesus. Psalm 37 tells us: “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.” Continuing with the imagery of light, Jesus, in Mark: 4, asks us, “Is a lamp brought in to put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?” Then, using the image of the sower, he tells us that we just need to scatter the seeds, and they will yield “full grain in the head” even if we do not know how it happens. And in verse 30, in one of the best-known parables, he compares the kingdom to a grain of mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, which “when sown upon the ground, ...becomes the greatest of all shrubs.” And Paul, in Ephesians, admonishes us to “not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
I’m not discounting our noble secular efforts, those attempts to improve the social contract through education or politics or health care or science, but unless these high-profile efforts are based on the humble and simple efforts of loving our God and, by extension, our neighbor, then they are doomed to fail. It is the little things, even if we don’t fully understand them, that produce miracles. And there lies our salvation.
Written by Grimsley Graham
Grimsley Graham is a retired public school teacher. He taught English and composition as well as social studies at Rogers High School for 30 years.