Shalom and Division

Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church
January 5, 2020

Picture it: England 1650. King Charles 1 has recently been beheaded by the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, bringing the divine right of kings to govern to an abrupt end. A war is raging between Protestants and  Catholics over who will rule England. Bear-baiting is a sport, and hangings are a family outing. The Church seemed to be splintering a hundred ways as Ranters say God permits them to do whatever they want in their wild parties, Adamites say God wants them to return to Eden and walk around naked, and Quakers…Quakers stand up and argue with Anglican priests during church, keep their hats on in the presence of the upper class, and refuse to swear loyalty oaths—to pledge allegiance—to the government. The mid-1600s, when young George Fox began preaching and the Quaker movement began, were a wild, violent, chaotic time. And out of that context came the  Quaker “peace testimony.” Several who had served the Parliamentary Army under Oliver Cromwell, fighting for English Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, followed their experience of personal revelation of God out of the army and into preaching. Their testimony was not so much against the military as for their experience of being restored to the innocence of the garden of Eden by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ, and that innocence took away all cause for war.

This testimony also derived from the Quaker commitment to equality of all persons and the determination to swear not at all. This refusal to take the oath of loyalty was frequently used by hostile persons to put Quakers in jail because they refused to swear allegiance to the government and its head. They committed their bodies and souls to be loyal to no political regime, but only to Jesus Christ, despite their natural preference for the Protestant side of the English Civil War. Thus, when the nation returned to King Charles II, they attempted to use their refusal to swear allegiance to Oliver Cromwell to prove to King Charles II that they were called to a different kind of kingdom and were no more or less loyal to King Charles than they had been to Oliver Cromwell. They still went to jail, because political systems demand body and soul loyalty.

The actual lives of Quakers in the beginnings were fraught with persecution from the established Church of England, hostilities from other sects like the early Baptists, and conflicts among the faithful themselves. And those latter conflicts, while they may make us skeptical of their entire restoration to innocence, often came directly from what made their contribution to the whole of Christianity important and worthwhile, namely, their insistence on personal experience of the Spirit of God and personal accountability to obey what the Spirit of God told them to do. This practical mysticism derived from their belief that within every person is a seed of Truth that God’s Spirit speaks to and causes to grow. And though they went on to be separatist and self-preserving, the truth that inspired the first generation ran like an undercurrent into the mainstreams of Christianity and changed how we understand God and our relationship to God through Christ. A soul at peace, in shalom, with God is a soul nothing can ultimately trouble.

At the time just before Jesus was born, the nation of Israel was occupied by a foreign power, Rome, and ruled locally by hereditary enemies represented in the various Herods. The Jews were split internally among collaborators with Rome and religious purists and purifiers, and zealots dedicated to overthrowing Rome. The temple system exploited worshipers for money, particularly the poor or foreign-born. But there were still faithful Jews hoping for the coming of Messiah who would bring Shalom.

Luke 1 tells about the birth of John who became known as the Baptizer. His birth was foretold to his father Zechariah, who just mentioned to God’s messenger that he and his wife were old and she was past child-bearing age and could he please have a sign so that his wife would believe him, and the sign was that he could not talk for the duration of the pregnancy. When John was born, Zechariah’s speech came back, and he prophesied:

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, because God has looked on God’s people and ransomed them, and raised a mighty helper for us in the house of David…God will deliver us safely out of the hands of our enemies and of all who hate us, will perform the mercy shown to our fathers and will remember God’s holy covenant, the oath God swore to Abraham our father, to grant that we, having been rescued from our enemies, might worship and serve God without fear, in holiness and right living before God’s presence for all our days. And now you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you go forth before the face of the Master to prepare his ways, to give to his people a knowledge of salvation in release from the bondage of their sins, through our God’s inmost mercy, whereby a dawn from above will visit us, to shine upon those sitting in darkness and death’s shadow, in order to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:67-79)

So let’s see what Zechariah thought would lead to peace, to shalom.

Liberation from oppression

Salvation from enemies

Restoration of the covenant with God through God’s mercy

Freedom to worship without fear, in holiness and justice before his presence, which was understood to be in the Temple

John was to be the prophetic voice that taught Israel to understand their sinfulness, their need for forgiveness, so that their lives would not be characterized by darkness and the fear of death but by light and peace.

And that is what John set out to do. He lived a life of abstinence and purity, spent time in the desert with only God, and then returned to preach. His message was about being washed in living water in the Jordan River to show repentance, the commitment to changing mind and behavior, and to confer release and forgiveness from sins. He told the crowds to share their clothing and food with the impoverished; he told tax-collectors to collect no more than was due; he told men in the army not to extort or falsely accuse anyone and to be content with their wages. His message was right in line with all the prophets before him: be generous, have integrity, tell the truth, be content.

But most importantly, he told them that his baptism was water, but that one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who carried a threshing flail to beat the chaff away from the grain, saving the grain into a storehouse and burning away the chaff “with inextinguishable fire.”

So there’s that to look forward to in an encounter with the Chosen and Sent One of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

I was asked to talk about Shalom. Because Shalom is a Hebrew word, it is found only in the Old Testament in that form. However, it is very likely that when the New Testament portrays Jesus speaking the Greek word for peace that what he actually said was some version of Shalom. For example, when Jesus said, “Peace be unto you,” he was using a familiar greeting that included the word Shalom. When Jesus talks about peace, the Old Testament Shalom inhabits and fills up the meaning of the word in the New Testament.

The history of how the word is used in the Old Testament is more complex than a notion of peace as tranquility or even the absence of conflict. The root of the word is a verb and these are some of the ways to translate it:

restore, recompense, reward, repay, requite, make restitution, make amends, complete, finish

be at peace, make peace with, make safe, make whole, make good

You can see that inherent in these words is an idea of justice. It is unsurprising that the word Shalom in various forms permeates the books of the Law—Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Shalom is about making things right, about fairness, about justice, about adjudicating who owes whom what and defining how to pay it. The word is used to describe the offering of an animal to God to acknowledge sin and make peace with God. The prophets weigh in against deceptive weights and measures because Shalom relates to providing full value, and they assert that God hates it when people cheat each other in business transactions, noting that they most often cheat the poor.

In other words, the concept of Shalom presupposes that things have gone wrong, and acknowledges our deep desire that things go right, that our lives be characterized by completeness, soundness, safety, health, prosperity, quiet, contentment, friendship.

Even the Greek word for peace, eirene, has a probable root that means “to join”, suggesting the prerequisite of something divided prior to the coming of peace.

So Zechariah’s prophecy is a prayer for Shalom.

I want to suggest to you two things. Zechariah’s prophecy as he understood it was too small. When he referred to God’s people, he understood it entirely as referring to the nation of Israel. But we know from the rest of the story of Jesus that the circle widened to include those outside almost immediately, both while Jesus ministered and after the Holy Spirit took over the disciples’ lives and moved them outside Jerusalem, Judea, and to the farthest reaches of the world they knew.

And the process of understanding that all peoples are God’s people has been fraught with division and pain, from the actual Messiah, Jesus, on down to today. In other words, Shalom is not simple, and the enemies of peace are within ourselves and the systems like families, religions, and politics that shape our fears, our shames, and our areas of ignorance. Further, being moved by God’s Spirit from a life of fear and shame and unknowing to a life of faith and acceptance and increasing understanding is painful and requires quite often a kind of divine surgery.

That is why John warns his hearers that the Messiah will come as a reaper, not grim, but determined. The one God sends to save God’s people will not necessarily be experienced as a gentle restorer of balance. In point of fact, Jesus himself makes this point by word and deed.

In Luke 12 and Matthew 10 Jesus describes his mission:

 “I came to set a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled….Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there will be five in one house divided three against two…; father against son, son against father, mother and daughter divided against each other…Why do you not judge what is right even for yourselves? For as you are going out with your adversary to a judge, make an effort to settle your debt with your adversary on the spot, so that he does not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you most surely will not come out from there until you pay the very last cent.” (Luke 12:49 ff)

I have to say that I was startled to find my thoughts directed (I hope by the Spirit of Truth) toward these passages when I signed on to speak about Shalom. Yet I think we can see our understanding of Shalom informs this passage. If Shalom is about making things right, about making things whole that have been broken, the first great brokenness of humanity is the willingness to be parted from God. This willingness shows up in every action that goes against what God’s Spirit has told us is right and good to do, in every evasion in our own spirits against absolutely trusting in the goodness and love and faithfulness of God and the claims that God has on us because of them. We owe God everything, starting with the breath of life itself, and we will be imprisoned within ourselves by law and justice until we admit what we owe to God, and admit our own inability to pay, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court where Jesus is our advocate as well as our judge. And then we have to stand naked and unashamed in God’s presence, hiding nothing, allowing God to bring what has been hidden out of the corners where we buried it, running toward God rather than away when we realize we’re not ready to meet God’s eyes. The Old Testament writers called this open stance toward God “a perfect heart”—“perfect” being derived from Shalom, meaning at peace with God, in friendship with God, rather than a heart without flaws. See the relationship between David and God if you want to understand the term.

And this version: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I came to bring not peace but a sword. For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. Whoever cherishes father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever cherishes son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever gains their soul will lose it, and whoever loses their soul for my sake will gain it. Whoever accepts you accepts me, and whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me.” (Matthew 10:34 ff)

This speech occurs in a context of sending disciples out to preach in Judea to Jews. In commissioning them, Jesus warns them of resistance, rejection, and violence in response to the message to repent because God’s kingdom is here. This message of God’s kingdom exposes inmost allegiances, which remain to family, race, religion, not to God.  As long as this is true, God is their adversary, who is contending with them for what they, what we, owe to God—our undivided loyalty, our faith, our faithfulness.

We are so often prone to put loyalty to God in storage while we sign on to our family heritage, our religious tradition, our political party, our national identity. We need, like early Quakers saw, to be restored to the innocence of personal relationship with God Almighty, to walk daily with God, to hide nothing from God. We need to make all other loyalties secondary to this primary one. If we are participating in any system that splits the world into us vs. them, we have been drawn away from our loyalty to God, who has no favorites in the world, who even told the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Jesus, “are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). In other words, all the peoples are God’s. God’s care is for all the peoples of the world. And don’t forget the story of Jonah, whom God sent to preach to the political and national enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, and Jonah’s complaint to God when God forgives and does not rain judgment on the Assyrians: “Isn’t this just what I predicted?   I knew that You are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that You will choose not to inflict misery.” To which God (eventually) responds: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than 120,000 persons that cannot tell their right hand from their left hand; and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:2,11). Jesus tweaks the religious leaders of his day by referencing this specific story and saying it will be easier for Nineveh in the day of judgment than for Israel because the Assyrians repented when the prophet preached (Matthew 12:41).

Both of these challenging passages are preceded by the following encouragement given by Jesus himself, and I can think of no better way for us to prepare within ourselves the way of the Lord as best we can:

“Guard yourselves from the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending to be good. There is nothing thoroughly veiled that will not be unveiled, or hidden that will not be known. Thus the things you said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you whisper in private rooms will be proclaimed on the rooftops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those killing the body and thereafter having nothing more that they can do…Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. Rather, even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:1-7). “What I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…Are not two sparrows sold for the smallest pittance? And not one of them will fall to earth without your Father. But even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. So do not be afraid; you are of greater worth than a great many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:27-31)

Jesus says that when we say by word and deed, “I’m with God. I have pledged my loyalty to God” that he, Jesus, will say in front of God’s angels, “I’m with that person; I have pledged loyalty to her, to him, to them.” And nothing can separate us from God’s faithful love. God’s love is committed to our Shalom, to our well-being, to our wholeness, which we cannot have without relationship, friendship—Shalom—with God.  And God will work to burn away the chaff or the nonsense in how we understand ourselves and our relationships in order to leave behind the true grain of our personhood which God will never let go to waste.

 The following helped me write this sermon:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/

The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Mark Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)

The New Testament, trans. David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale UP, 2017)

George MacDonald's writings in general

Romans 2 and 3: God in Us, Moving toward Us, Resting on Us

A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians

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Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay Press, a Friends publishing house

Lesson 2

Romans 1:18-23; 3:9-12, 19-20

Quakers have a view of the human heart that includes both the bent toward evil and the yearning toward good. The light of God enlightens every person (John 1) as well as the need for people to turn from their own error and idolatry to worship the true God. George Fox frequently pointed out how the churchgoers of his day placed the building and the hierarchy in the place of God, who dwells in each believer as a temple and who meets with congregations of believers to teach them in spirit and in truth.

Paul says that each person has an internal witness to truth and that the wicked in every culture ignore that witness. That witness calls us to accountability for our actions. Instead, we prefer to place creation before the creator, and we sacrifice to things that have no eternal worth.

I was startled into awareness of my own early departure from that witness within. I was reading Becky Pippert’s Out of the Saltshaker, and she referred to the myth of innocence we carry when we try to justify ourselves, to make it ok that we have violated our inner witness. I remembered a cruel exclusion of another child when I was very young. It came back to me so clearly and convicted me that I was not innocent; my meanness had scarred me, even though I was so young. Paul points out that none of us has a place to stand that makes us qualified to judge others. This is both humbling and a big relief.

Even grownup Christians can violate their instincts to do good, can disobey the light within, can ignore what the law requires, namely to love our God wholly and love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Romans 13:8-9). As Fox would have put it, we need to “possess what we profess.” When God points out a gap between what we say we believe and what we do, we need to be ready to turn around and go God’s way.

Lesson 3

Romans 3:21-31

Paul asserts that the law, the prophets, and the faith exhibited by Jesus all reveal the trustworthiness of God. The faith of Jesus in God our Father helps us understand the law and the prophets. We understand the whole Bible through Jesus.

George Fox wrote that the scripture was given forth by the Spirit of God and all people must first come to the Spirit of God in themselves by which they might know God and Christ of whom the prophets and the apostles learned; and by the same Spirit they might know the holy scriptures and the Spirit which was in them that gave them forth, the spirit of God. He told his countrymen that they did not know the word of God but only the letter.

In his search for truth, George Fox met Jesus personally: “There is one,” he heard, “even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.” This transformed him from a heartsick seeker to a jubilant and determined sharer of the good news that Jesus Christ is present today to teach his people himself. Just as the inner witness of God was universal, the nearness, the presence of the Kingdom is universal also. Jesus ransoms all from slavery to sin. In our present time, God is just what God should be, right and good, and God makes us just as we should be. We can trust God to do this because Jesus did.

  

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Prepositions are so tricky in every translation, and the ones in this phrase from verse 22, “unto all and upon all” (KJV), are telescoped into “for all” (NRSV). However, the dual sense of how we can now know that God is just as God should be is a little lost in “for all.”  This conviction about God is both moving toward and into us and resting on us. The combined sense of movement and rest shows up in the next story of Abraham (Romans 4) whose confidence in God made him right with God and helped him hope that God’s promise would be fulfilled despite his not seeing how it could be accomplished.

Romans 1 Radical Equality

A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians

Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay Press, a Friends publishing house

Lesson 1

Romans 1:1-6, 14-17

The theme of slavery and freedom runs throughout Romans. Even the word “Lord” can mean “Owner.” Paul is the slave of Jesus, sent out with a message, a gift for the outsiders of his world, the Gentiles. This message is the good news about God that Jesus taught and lived. When this good news moves us to faith, to trust in the character and power and love of God, we are also slaves sent out with a message. We act on behalf of our owner, Jesus, and we share the good news with our own version of outsiders.

This necessity to take the good news to others moved George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), in the mid-1600s. He wrote in his Journal that the Lord let him see a great people to be gathered (Ch. 6). “When the Lord God and His Son Jesus Christ sent me forth into the world to preach His everlasting gospel and kingdom, I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward Light, Spirit, and Grace, by which all might know their salvation and their way to God; even that Divine Spirit which would lead them into all truth…”(Ch. 2). We can hear in “commanded” the same sense of obligation that moved Paul.

Also like Paul, Fox shared the good news with all levels of society, from nobility to beggar. He made no difference between social classes, so he took off his hat to no one, which witnessed to the essential equality of all before God. Though it is difficult for Paul to say, he does affirm that the good news is as much for the Gentiles, the Greeks and the barbarians, as it is for the Jews.

Why might Paul—or we—be ashamed of the good news?  For one thing, it removes our own class or status. Everyone who believes it becomes a slave of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t belong to any one group. It is common. It strips everyone down to essentials, like being born again. The good news is the energy of God, the strength of God that pushes all who believe God towards deliverance, freedom, salvation.

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How Paul Got to Philippi and What He Did There

Preached at South Salem Friends, Feb. 26, 2012
Acts 16

This chapter is about the first journey of Paul after the Council of Jerusalem where the headquarters of the church embrace Gentile believers as co-heirs of the Gospel without requiring them also to become followers of Moses. Then Paul and Barnabas disagree sharply on whether to take John Mark with them, and they end up parting ways. Paul and Silas journey through Asia Minor (now Turkey), while Barnabas and John Mark sail to Cyprus. Paul and Silas pick up Timothy along the way. So today, we’re going to talk about how Paul got to Philippi and what happened there and what we can learn from these events. This is Paul’s first preaching visit to Europe.

Background on Philippi—in the Balkans area of Macedonia; grew up around a gold mining area, prosperous beyond its size; then a place where Roman veterans went to retire and later Roman colonists—mixed bunch of ethnic identities, but enthusiastically Roman.

As Paul and Silas traveled through Asia, the Bible says they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” When they attempted to take a right turn into Bithynia, “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” So they took the left to Troas. In the night, Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man pleading with him to “come to Macedonia and help us.” Paul’s response was to set sail immediately to Macedonia, and one of the leading cities there, Philippi.

What is interesting about this is the open-endedness of Paul’s trip planning. Suppose you and I were on a road trip, and we thought we would stop and visit people along the way, and Jesus told us not to. And then when we got to a coastline, we planned to turn right and Jesus told us not to. This seems easily a parable for the journey of our lives as well. When do we preach? “When Jesus tells us to.” Where do we turn our attention to next? “Wherever Jesus calls us.” What do we say when we get there? “Whatever Jesus tells us to say.”

So it is obvious that the most obvious characteristic of anyone who wants to be God’s agent in the world is listening to and obeying the Spirit of Jesus.

That’s one of the central messages of George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement: Jesus Christ is present to teach us himself (George Fox’s Journal, ch. 1, and elsewhere). Behind that statement is acceptance of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection in history, and within it is faith that the Spirit Jesus promised to send is in fact here and in conversation with us.

What is Jesus saying to you personally today? Or to your congregation? How can we make space for Jesus to tell us whom to reach out to, what area to focus on, what to say to those folks?

Then in the story, Paul and his companions sought out a spot the local Jewish people might gather to pray. They found a group of women, and they spoke to them. At a slight distance, apparently, was Lydia, a worshiper of God. She came originally from Thyatira, over in Asia, so was perhaps something of an outsider. She was also a prosperous merchant. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what Paul said, and shortly she and her household were baptized and she brought Paul and company home to stay at her house.

What is interesting here is that Paul thought he should start with the Jews in the proudly Roman town of Philippi, and he tried, but his first convert was a Gentile, and judging from the names in the book of Philippians, most of the others were non-Jewish also. Another interesting thing is that Paul did not insist on speaking with the men; he spoke to those who had gathered to pray, and it appears not to have mattered to him that they were all women. Another interesting thing is that a socially powerful woman was his sponsor in Philippi.

So we can infer that when we obey Jesus, go where Jesus says to go, there will be someone ready to hear us. That work is God’s work—getting the audience ready to hear. Lydia was spiritually ready to hear the Gospel—and the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly and accept the good news.

Another central vision of the Quaker founder George Fox was that God showed him “a great people to be gathered…a great people in white raiment by a river’s side coming to the Lord.” On a First-day shortly after, Fox went to a meeting of Seekers, recognized them as the people in white raiment, and “gathered them in the name of Jesus” (GF Journal, ch. 5).

Who are the people we know who are ready to hear us? Who has God been preparing to hear the Gospel? What if those who are ready to hear aren’t the same as the ones we anticipated talking to? Can we be open to accept those God is calling?

In the next part of the story, Paul and Silas were harassed by a slave girl who shouted over and over, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She followed them, shouting, for many days. Paul got annoyed, and he ordered her spirit of divination out of her in the name of Jesus Christ. This got him into a heap of trouble, as we will see.

But what is interesting is that she is telling the truth about them. She is free advertising for them, pointing them out in every crowd, shouting like a barker at a carnival. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, come see one of the WONDERS OF THE WORLD. And Paul hates this. Why? Perhaps her shouting makes it impossible for him to actually preach. Perhaps she gathers people’s attention to him, rather than to the gospel. Perhaps he pities her compulsion to shout and is angry at her owners who use it to get rich.

What we can learn from this is that it is ok for the gospel to be preached quietly without a lot of fanfare. Further, getting a lot of attention can actually interfere in our ability to share the good news. We can’t be motivated by the desire to be the center of attention; we have to be motivated by the spirit of Jesus to share what Jesus wants us to share. And it did no one any good to know Paul had good news to share if he couldn’t be heard over the advertising.

How can we clear a space for the gospel to be heard? How can we not be distracted by praise for our efforts or other kinds of advertising? How can we keep our own and every one else’s attention on the good news that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, and is present with us to teach us himself?

In Paul’s story, the next events look like disaster; Paul and Silas were falsely accused of Jewish proselytizing in a Roman town, mobbed, stripped, beaten, thrown in jail and into stocks. He and Silas prayed and sang hymns through the night. An earthquake shook the foundations of the prison, opened the doors, and unfastened everyone’s chains.

This is such a great picture of the freeing force of the Gospel; literally, it is an earthquake and a jail, but symbolically, it is Paul’s and Silas’s obedience to God and rejoicing in hard circumstances breaking open the whole system of imprisonment. This is a small picture of what is happening in Philippi in the spiritual realm. Even the jailor becomes a believer.

How can we see that as we obey Jesus, adversity is opportunity for a great shaking that will break open our imprisonment? Charles Wesley wrote, “Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night; thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I rose, my dungeon streamed with light; my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee” ("And Can It Be"). As George Fox wrote, “I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness, and in that also I saw the infinite love of God” (GF Journal, ch. 1).

As we take time to listen for God in order to follow God’s leading, let’s ask these questions:

What is Jesus saying to us today? How can we make space for Jesus to tell us whom to reach out to, what places to focus on, what to say to those folks?

Who are the people we know who are ready to hear us? Who has God been preparing to hear the Gospel? What if those who are ready to hear aren’t the same as the ones we anticipated talking to? How can we be open to accept those God is calling?

How can we clear a space for the gospel to be heard? How can we not be distracted by praise for our efforts or by other kinds of advertising or press coverage? How can we keep our own and everyone else’s attention on the good news that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, and is present with us to teach us himself?

How can we see that as we obey Jesus, adversity is opportunity for a great shaking that will break open our imprisonment?