Monday, December 31, 2007 

I will recount the gracious deeds of the LORD . . .
It was no messenger or angel
but his presence that saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them.
Isaiah 63: 7a, 9a

I grew up with the cold war.  It was born about the time I was born.  I outlived it. What a shock when it finally occurred to me that it was all over.  My goodness!

The great enemy had not fed its soldiers.  The enemy had weapons that didn't work, and few bullets, too.  In the end they did a much better job of hurting their own people than hurting me or my people. 

After years of melodrama and tension, the grand enemy turned out to be a big dud. That's the way it always was.  How dumb did we have to be to not see it all those years?

On both sides, resources and wealth had been funneled into support of worries and fears instead of the real needs of people, over there on that side, and over here on our side. The only way we allowed ourselves to understand things was in competition with other nations for our very existence.  Oh, for the power and the resources.  Oh, to survive. Oh, to get there first.

I reflect on the world around me.  So did Isaiah.  He showed me these two clashing worlds.  There was a world with God's grace, and one without it.

Isaiah saw his contemporaries turn from God and follow their own selfish way. The Cold War was a selfish way for my side.  Do you see anything in your world today which is nothing but a selfish way, among peoples, among nations?

We believe in the Incarnation: God in the flesh.  It's an impossible story, full of God's grace.

God became flesh.  Out of love, yes.  And to redeem.  WOW!!!

You and I must be present in the world too, awake to the real sufferings and joys of the world, so we can hear and act on God's call.