Exchanging the Truth

AM Psalm 61, 62 • PM Psalm 68:1-20(21-23)24-36
Jer. 2:1-13 • Rom. 1:16-25 • John 4:43-54

The wonderful couple who built my house made a gravel parking area and moved some big rocks to arc at its boundary. In the center of the arc sits a large rock on which one can sit and look down into the hollow and feel God close. I have grieved and wept on that rock, given humble thanks on that rock, begged for forgiveness, and giggled with my children there. I sit on my rock and talk to the spirits of my loved ones. I think perhaps the author of psalm 62 had a resting place like mine and knew that God was close. Let the words soak into you:

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
...my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

My faith has grown deeper from learning to be still on my rock; my relationship with God not progressing on a neat, linear path but wandering through a maze, many times lost and resenting God that I was. At times I insisted on basing my faith on my own perceptions, not so much a follower of Christ as a consumer of Christ — shopping, bartering, willing to make exchanges. Like the week after Christmas, I preferred to take the gifts I was given and trade them in for something else I thought I wanted.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we hear more about exchanges:

...for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.... they exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

“Exchanged the truth about God for a lie” — pretty jarring to frame it that way, yes? But I think that must be the ultimate lie — to exchange God’s greatest gift for something that doesn’t make us change; to reap the benefit of Christ without any cost in our life. Do we loosen the grip we have on our lives in order to open our hands to the gifts of God?

Sometimes that is scary. Thankfully, God is patient with us, with me. I hope today you will sit in your sacred space and know God is with you.

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from him...
my mighty rock, my refuge...

Written by Bernadette Reda

I can’t wait to hug again!