Joy that leaks

In our stairwell, on the whiteboard, is a hand drawn bingo card that the kids have up for the holidays.

In our stairwell, on the whiteboard, is a hand drawn bingo card that the kids have up for the holidays. It has the expected items, “Mom sends someone to the store,” to Yellow House specialties, “Bones?” Tucked in the upper lefthand corner is “Mom cries over poetry,” because they know me that well. It is not marked off yet, thank you very much.  To be fair the only poem I’ve read to the family is “Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat,” and as you might imagine, that one doesn’t elicit tears.

I may have to mark it off now.

Yesterday, I continued the Advent series at church, and I wanted to weave the Christmas story in a new way for the kids. So, I started back in the Garden, where the world was perfect. The way the ancients craft this narrative the Garden is pure goodness. The animals lived side by side, humans knew harmony, the Infinite walked with the finite in the cool of the evening. It was so perfect clothing didn’t even itch (please laugh, the kids didn’t get it—a fact I should probably be grateful for).

I brought a puzzle of creation with all the amazing animals and colors as an example of the garden, and to the kids’ astonishment, I dropped it, sending pieces all over the gathering blanket. I said that the perfection of the garden broke, and the breaking broke the Infinite’s heart. It broke Love’s heart because of the lies it brought into the world.  As the kids gathered the puzzle together, they saw writing on the back of the pieces that said, “God is far away.” “God doesn’t’ understand.” “God doesn’t listen.” “God is angry.”

One 7-year-old said, “That’s not a lie, God is far away. He lives in the sky.”  I just let that sit there for the adults to hear.

I said God already had a plan to put the garden back together, and did they know what it was?  “To fix everything!”  was their exuberant response.

I said, No. Not yet. This plan was going to take time. It was going to take willing people. But it was going to address the lies. I said that the plan did start right here in this story, because God promised the humans they would be used to fix the pieces.  Then, then God sat down and made them clothing.  That was God’s first act in bringing Shalom back to the world. The Divine became a seamstress.  

The Hebrew word used for garment in this story is used in a few other places.  It’s the word for the coat of many colors that Jacob made his favorite son Joseph. It’s the word describing the priest’s garments. This word is for special clothing. Basically, God became Edna from the Incredibles. The right color. The right texture. For a specific purpose. And definitely no itchy tags.

I told the kids that if they wanted to hear the rest of the plan, they had to come back next week for the continuing installments, closed with a prayer, and proceed to scoop up errant puzzle pieces and exit gracefully to stage left as they scurried off to Sunday school.

Actually, I had to come back  to the stage and read the day’s scripture. In other words, now I had to read a poem, with the kiddo’s plaintive “God lives in the sky,” sounding in my ears.

This poem is set when a people have been displaced, driven to a foreign land by oppressors, and they are crying out, wondering how long they must suffer. They are nowhere near a promised fulfilled; everything is shattered and the clothing itches. Their prophet, Isaiah, is writing words of comfort, words that take the reader back to the garden.

The room got very quiet as I read the words that echo down through the ages; words needed by people group after people group, century after century. Words that promise Shalom, restoration. Words that say we are all a part of the plan, because the plan has to be reenacted over and over again, until we, as humans, stop throwing the puzzle on the floor. The prophet evokes an image of a shoot coming out of a stump.  Here in the PNW we know about nursery logs where hemlocks grow out of dead cedars, and the prophet promised new growth from decay. The garden was long ago, but the promise that the lies would lose their power remained:

. . . and you won’t judge by appearances,
or make decisions by hearsay.
You will treat poor people with fairness
and will uphold the rights of the land’s downtrodden.

Justice will be the belt around this your waist -
 faithfulness will gird you up.
Then the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard will lie down with the young goat;
the calf and the lion cub will graze together,
and a little child will lead them.

These words have sat with me since I was a child and entranced by the picture in my Bible. But yesterday their hope, their peace, their invitation to us right here in our time and place, ran right out of my eyes as I pictured a world the way it could be. Where it is so safe a child could lead us.

I’m convinced the plan has many iterations, and we can both weep with the prophet and believe in what he calls out to us across the centuries.  

May the Spirit of YHWH will rest on you.

(I probably need to mark off the square on the Bingo card.)

#joyasresistance