Spiritual Hiccups - Finding Hope

Every now and then someone will post a quote on Twitter or facebook from a long dead, famous person such as Socrates or Cicero who was sure that the world was going to pot.  It will talk about how youth have lost all respect for their elders, government leaders have become corrupt, and so on.  I appreciate such quotes. It is helpful to be reminded that our troubles are usually not all that new or spectacular.  They are often rather mundane, and humanity  has weathered such troubles in the past.

Psalm 12 in today's readings provides a similar sort of reminder on the religious/faith front.  "Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind. They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak."  When church folk lament the current struggles of many congregations, it is helpful to remember that this is nothing new either.  It's not as though God's people have simply been humming along just splendidly until we came on the scene and messed things up.

But for people of faith, hope comes from more than realizing that such troubles are not new, that the Church has survived worse crises in the past.  Hope comes from the certainty that the future is not determined simply by how good or how poorly we run the Church.  God has not turned over the future to us.  God will act.  God's purposes will be accomplished.

Psalm 12, when it surveys a desperate situation where "there is no longer anyone who is godly," does not give in to despair.  Instead the psalm expects God to rectify this situation.  " 'Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,' says the LORD; 'I will place them in the safety for which they long.' "  

The promise that God will act is not really something I can prove or explain so convincingly that anyone will believe it.  Trusting the future to God and living toward that future require a deep faith that I don't think can exist without a vivid sense of God's presence at work in one's life.  And that means that helping struggling congregations may be less about learning new worship styles, attending church growth workshops, and adopting proven evangelism techniques.  And it may instead be about becoming more open to God's presence - spending more time in prayer and silence, paying attention to those who seem to have been inspired by the Spirit, becoming more attentive to where God is moving in our individual lives, etc.

I'm one of those people who never used to have much use for "spirituality."  Walking the labyrinth and spiritual directors were fine for other folks, but not for me.  Give me things I could understand like theology and biblical exegesis.  But while theology and exegesis are extremely important tools for me as a pastor, I have discovered that I am of virtually no use as a pastor without a healthy spirituality, without cultivating my own awareness of and openness to God.  Only when I truly sense God's touch can I hope in and work toward God's future, joyfully trusting that God is faithful still.

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