Seek
Today is 1/29/21. The last day of 10 days of palindromes.
Perhaps like me, you are seeking order in any possible place and moment in a time that can feel primarily chaotic and uncertain.
Amid this ongoing pandemic as we face the reality that we’ve been doing this for almost a year, I’ve been struck recently by the feeling of being stuck with myself. I look in the mirror each morning, and think, “Well, here I am again!” I want to lift my eyes upward and experience God’s presence in each day, but I am overwhelmed by both the mundane and the monotony as well as the chaos and the confusion.
Do you feel this way? Wandering around the room, pausing to remember what day it is, trying to decide where to focus --what are your priorities when demands are real and pressing, but the dimension of your world is drastically reduced?
… Do I send the email before or after I do laundry? Do I do laundry or wear the same outfit again? Set up another zoom call? (Not another!) Help my child with math or reading or both? Figure out what I can make with the food in the refrigerator? Review a spreadsheet? Watch the news stream again? The days seem long and also surprisingly short as we reflect back and ask, What did I do today?
It is easy to get lost. And lostness often causes us to freeze. This may sound counter-intuitive but when we are lost the invitation is to SEEK. It begins by asking what am I seeking? (Besides the pair of shoes you misplaced six months ago). Am I seeking the comfort of the past? Am I seeking an elusive future? Or am I seeking the presence of God Who is maker of heaven and earth; Who cannot be contained in one building or program or agenda? Am I seeking the One who calls us Beloved; who travels a far distance to find us?
This weekend we invite you to a practice of seeking God right where you are. The invitation is to lift your head above the mundane and the monotony, the chaos and the confusion to seek the Lord. Our triune God seeks hard after us to communicate our worth and God-given identity and longs for us to be seekers who stop, turn and embrace our relational identity that is not a transaction.
Learning from Amos
The invitation to seek is woven throughout scripture and we see this word is central to Amos. Meditate on these words from Amos 5. We’ve included in the 5:4-9; 14-15 in the Message because the freshness of the language catches our attention.
God’s Message to the family of Israel:
“Seek me and live.
Don’t fool around at those shrines of Bethel,
Don’t waste time taking trips to Gilgal,
and don’t bother going down to Beer-sheba.
Gilgal is here today and gone tomorrow
and Bethel is all show, no substance.”
So seek God and live! You don’t want to end up
with nothing to show for your life
But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.
For God will send just such a fire,
and the firefighters will show up too late.
Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
and stomp righteousness into the mud.
Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos
star-flung with constellations by God,
A world God wakes up each morning
and puts to bed each night.
God dips water from the ocean
and gives the land a drink.
God, God-revealed, does all this.
And he can destroy it as easily as make it.
He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.
Seek good and not evil—
and live!
You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
being your best friend.
Well, live like it,
Hate evil and love good,
then work it out in the public square.
How does this invitation to seek God, resonate with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:33?
Seek first the Kingdom of God and all its’ righteousness and all these things will be added unto to you?
Through Amos we learn that the people of Israel lost their identity, thinking they were so special, and they forgot to seek the God who already had sought them. Their worship became a ritual empty of their dynamic God. They forgot their connection to the larger community. To live as God’s Beloved is to trust that what God gives to us flows through us to to bless others. The God of Justice brings healing and restoration to the world and all of creation through us. To seek the Lord and live means to discover that your living is interwoven with the lives of others. To seek the Lord and live is to name that which oppresses and diminishes and destroys others and to pursue the way of peace.
When you seek God and all that God desires to reveal, you help others flourish. Do you trust that? This is the heart of the message of scripture. When you say yes to Jesus as Lord you say yes to the world God loves and yes to being a bearer of love.
We invite you to take time to pause some time in your day and seek God’s healing presence, intimate counsel, and merciful love. God is with you, for you, and longs to work through you.
Prayer
Lord of Creation, thank you for the way you have created me – wonderfully and beautifully made. Thank you for looking upon me and calling me your beloved.
Jesus, Emmanuel, open my eyes this day to the ways I can offer the gifts, resources, personality, PRESENCE, and insight I possess to be used for good. As a blessing.
Spirit of grace and mercy, show me how I can participate in your flowing river of justice to bring healing, hope, and restoration — even here and now in a pandemic.
God of intimacy and love, help me trust that there is space in Your Story for me.
—reflection by Renée Notkin