Protection
/O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy…
- from this week’s collect
I hardly want to open the paper just lately, with all the fires and droughts and floods and variants and attacks on voting rights, etc. If I had my way, these things would not happen. I suspect you would make changes in the world, too, if it were in your power to do so. But it is not. When push comes to shove, we are really quite powerless over many, many things in this world and even in our own lives and bodies.
Our liturgy this Sunday will start with the opening collect, which begins with the words above. In a world that can feel out of control, we’ll call on God, who alone is strong and holy, in whom we find our protection. As people of faith, we know that trusting in God is the only sure thing in an unsure world. God’s strength, holiness and protection is more reliable and constant than our own frail powers. If there’s anything good about the last few distressing years, it’s that we’ve been given the opportunity to remember that God is God and we are not God. We’ve had the opportunity to be humbled.
Here’s a small example. I wanted to do a whole lot of hiking on my vacation, but the weather told me otherwise. I could have tried to change the weather (delusion) or I could have proceeded with my own plans and hiked up mountains during thunderstorms (insanity) or I could have nursed my anger and annoyance that my plans were not coming to fruition (resentment.) But since I was not in control of the weather, or even my own plans, I was grateful to recognize that I was being given a fine opportunity to rest quietly - which I needed, and which I did! Trusting in the bigger picture allowed me to be grateful for what I had instead of focused on what I did not.
There is an old Yiddish proverb that says, “When we make plans, God laughs.” The world and the many difficult things in it can be disappointing, frustrating or frightening - especially when I believe that I’m the one that’s supposed to change, fix or protect the world on my own somehow. But I am definitely not strong or holy enough to do that. Whether it’s not getting to go hiking as planned, or dealing with an unexpected diagnosis or the betrayal of a loved one or the horror of climate change, we’re not in charge of what we get most of the time. In many ways, we are powerless in this world, and faithful people recognize the value of having that kind of humility.
But we also know that there is nothing stronger than God, nothing more holy and nothing more powerful. Our little plans are often lost in the shuffle in this earthly life. Some take this as evidence that God does not care about people. But I trust that God cares so much that God is always moving forward with what is right, even when it doesn’t look that way from my perspective. The injustices and brokenness of this world seem to me to come from people grabbing for power instead of humbly recognizing they’re not gods.
If we can humbly trust that there is a better and more enveloping bigger picture behind even those things that we would really rather didn’t happen, we can rest in trust even in disturbing times.
Looking forward to seeing everyone again this Sunday! Hope you can make it.
