“Darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples – but the Lord will rise upon YOU.” (Isaiah 60:2a)

Sometimes we’ve got to laugh, just to keep from crying. Life’s not easy: you think you’ve got it covered, and then something worse happens!

I was humbled by Kate Bowler’s story-telling in a fall issue of Christian Century magazine (1/6/21). A Duke seminary professor and cancer-survivor who shared her life-threatening ordeal in Everything Happens for a Reason (and other Lies I’ve Loved), Bowler says:

“Recently I was just managing regular terrible stuff, and then I got bit by a copperhead snake and I had to go to the hospital.  They started with sentences like, ‘You probably won’t die’…and then ten minutes later it was like, ‘Most people don’t lose a limb.’ There was a whole lot of watch-checking. I laughed the whole time because I couldn’t believe I was back in the same place where I’d almost died multiple times. [Now] I’ve got a very sweet nurse marking my leg with a Sharpie to follow the process of the venom. I’ve got this really sweet medical student who appears to be 12; he does not know what’s going on, but he’s very eager to bring me apple juice. [Laughing] lets me be there for just a second to see the humanity of it. I walked away from that situation a couple of days later thinking, ‘That’s was a surprisingly positive experience.’ That’s life I guess. That feels a little like life.” 

This New Year 2022 begins with an invitation for each one of us to be humbled by real Life, so that we personally can learn to trust God more…and gently come alongside others who are frightened, ill, or snake-bit. Darkness covers the people all around us. “Lift up your eyes and look around!” (Isaiah 60:4a) But our God promises to be at work, delivering a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). Even when we’re consumed managing our regular terrible stuff, and then one more *%! thing happens (!)….trust the promise. Laugh a little. Take yourself less seriously, and others more seriously. 

I pray that 2022 will be for you and your churches a surprisingly positive experience.    

~ Steve