I spent the summer bicycling from my front door in Grand Marais to the doorstep of the Gaspay Peninsula in Quebec. After three months on the road, I logged 2800 miles and had a good deal of time to reflect on the way that God’s gifts of refreshment make our life journeys possible.
With new clarity, I came to appreciate how vulnerable and dependent we human beings are. In order to survive, we need continual gifts of food and water and God offers them daily. But when the material level of life becomes uncertain, we can quickly forget about providence and turn our attention to ensuring our own survival.
Two pressing concerns in our society are security and scarcity. The surveys tell us that people are anxious about the future. Theydoubt that life will be better for their children and grandchildren than it has been for them and they are afraid of losing what they have: their jobs, their pensions and their homes. These fears are not entirely misplaced. According to a study published this fall, the top 20% of Americans now have 84% of the nation’s wealth and the bottom 40% no net worth at all. Economic inequality is at an all-time high.
Many people are tempted to respond to this reality by calling for a return to a “survival of the fittest” philosophy. But if we assume that we must compete with others in order to survive, we will find ourselves living in a society that is increasingly indifferent to human need and refuses to fund efforts to enhance the common good. Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Daily Gazette
calls this behavior “partisan tribalism” and it portends a return to a modern form of feudalism in which people withdraw into small, self-protective cliques and look out for themselves.
This is an important time for people of faith to help our anxious neighbors to recapture the conviction that God cares for us. We can share the timely teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not be anxious about your life, about what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body or about what you will wear; for God knows that you need these things.”
And, we can emphasize the fact that a culture that trusts in God to meet its material needs is one that is naturally more compassionate and generous. Studies tell us that people who go to church regularly are two
to four times more generous in
supporting all charities.
This is true, not only of practicing Christians but also Muslims, Jews and other people of faith.
I feel blessed to have a personal relationship with God that deepens through the years and I am learning to depend more on my Higher Power, as I grow older. On my cycling odyssey, I needed daily refreshment. When sweat poured into my eyes and my throat became dry, living water became a necessity. And I enjoyed it in abundance, drinking from each of the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence Seaway, until the fresh water turned to salt. Living water: a gift of God that flows from sea to shining sea.
As the months went by, I realized that I was following in the footsteps of other sojourners who depend far more than I on God’s gifts of refreshment: I thought of the members of our sister churches in Chiapas, who are always short of drinking water. And on the north shore of Lake Erie, I passed through the town of Dresden, Ontario where I stopped to visit Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As I walked through this historic sanctuary for escaped slaves who journeyed on the Underground Railroad, I thought about all of the African American illegals and aliens who followed the “Drinking Gourd,” or Big Dipper to freedom and were refreshed along the way by gifts of living water.
Although my own life journey is inestimably easier than those of my friends in Chiapas or the residents of Dawn Settlement, I am presented with many of the same spiritual choices as they. I can have confidence that God is guiding me to a land of promise or doubt that I’m getting anywhere. I can conclude that I am dependent on my own efforts to survive or I can trust in God to provide for my needs. I can store up treasures on earth to increase my sense of security or I can fund the greater good, knowing that my destiny is bound-up with the destiny of all living things.
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
November, our contributor
is Reverend Peter R. Monkres
of the First Congregational
Church – United Church of
Christ, Grand Marais, a Just
Peace church.
Next Week:
The Ministry of Earth-Keeping.
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