These are days...

For the longest time I was NOT a Natalie Merchant fan.  It was a generational thing, but her music - like the times - didn't seem to go anywhere.  It rambled and swooped and then... ended. I've changed my take on sister Natalie, however, as I've gotten more into wandering and waiting myself and now appreciate her on many levels.

Actually, I though of her music while reading this spiritual reflection by Anthony Robinson yesterday:

I love the song, "We are climbing Jacob's ladder, we are climbing Jacob's ladder . . . every rung goes higher, higher, every rung goes higher, higher." But on reading the actual story in Genesis, I noticed something. We human beings aren't the ones climbing the ladder. It is angels, messengers of God, who are ascending and descending the ladder from heaven to earth. So what?

We can get the idea that it is all about us climbing ladders, whether worldly or spiritual. Getting to the right neighborhood, the right job or school. Becoming more spiritual can be another ladder to climb. We can get the idea that by our resolute and steady climbing, we shall attain some God place. Except our story says something different. It says that God comes down to this place, to our place, wherever that place may be. And then we, with Jacob, stammer in astonished surprise, "Surely God is in this place and I did not know it."

The popular author Karen Armstrong, in a recent book, urges that true religion is our human search for an ultimately unknowable God. Reading this, I thought, the gospel says something different. It says that God has come in search of us. In Jesus, God comes down the ladder to find us, even when we aren't very "spiritual," even when we are lost and on the run.

Prayer
I thank thee, O God, that the good news is not about my upward climb, but about your downward descent; that faith begins when we, though like Jacob lost and on the run, are found by you. Amen.

These days both Natalie and Anthony are speaking truth to my ministry...