At some point in my teenage years, I overheard someone say that people often marry a person that reminds them of one of their parents. At the time I took it as an odd observation but didn’t spend too much time reflecting on it. In my dating life, when I was considering who was good “relationship material” I definitely never had on the list “just like dad” or “striking similar to mom.” Yet, after spending over sixteen years sharing life with Brandon, I have found that this odd observation bears truth in our relationship. There are a number of similarities between him and my dad in particular. Some are foundational to who we are (we treat each other with mutual respect as I witnessed between my parents, Brandon is committed to knowing our kids for who they are and being actively involved in their lives) and there are other things that are random, but too similar to not note. One of those traits that doesn’t impact the quality of our marriage but does make me pause due to its quirky randomness, is a shared obsession with flashlights. My dad LOVES flashlights. I am pretty sure at least 50% of my birthday, Christmas, and father’s day gifts to him over the years have included a flash light of some kind. I remember his excitement the year he got a flashlight that doesn’t run on batteries but instead on the power generated by cranking a handle. The first gifts that he picked out to give my kids (because lets me honest 90% of the presents are bought by nana) were little flashlights. My dad LOVES flashlights. I don’t think I realized how much Brandon loved flashlights until the night of our wedding rehearsal, when he gave his gifts to the groomsmen, included with each one was a flashlight. And sure enough, we have bins full of them now— small ones, high powered ones, headlamps, black-lights… The boys already know that if they need to pick out a gift for dad, they are pretty safe if they show up with a flashlight. Brandon LOVES flashlights.
I enjoyed on Sunday in worship how he used one of his favorite flashlights to make a connection to our faith in God. He talked about the powerful beam it produces and how when it is pitch black it casts light far off into the distance. Brandon related the comfort of the flashlight to the comfort we seek in our life with God. We say God is our light- that God helps us know the path forward, that God helps us see more clearly, that God overcomes the darkness. Yet, often those claims come with an underlying expectation that God’s light will take all of the confusion away. We don’t want to just know the next right step, but we want to know where all of those steps will leading. We want to see the whole journey illuminated right now, not piece by piece. That is not the light that God promises. God promises to be the light with us, helping us to experience the present free of fear. God promises to help us take the next step on our path. God promises to be intimately with us along the journey.
Psalm 27 says “God is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear.” Then the psalmist goes on to list all of the many things in his life that are worthy of fear— enemies trying to kill him, war breaking out all around him— but proclaims his confidence in God in the face of it all. Maybe it is the cynical part of me coming out, but I don’t read this as a overly confident proclamation of his fearlessness, I read it instead as him acknowledging his fears straight out, but then attempting to reassure himself of God’s presence through it all. He goes on to plead for God to stay with him, and again says that God protects him and keeps him safe. He ends with a reminder— for himself and for us as well— “Wait upon the Lord.”
I am feeling this Psalm. For the past two years we have been experimenting with new ways of being the Church. Brandon and I have pastored churches for over a decade now. We have seen God work through the rituals, the traditions, and the liturgical flow of our established congregations. But two years ago we felt a call to try something new. In this new worshiping community, we want to foster a space of authentic existence with others— where we own our fears, our passions, our uniqueness and confidently proclaim that God loves each of us and desires for us to work together for God’s vision to become a reality. We want families to feel intimately connected and known by each other. We want kiddos to feel empowered to lead in worship and in life. We want for each of us to make a positive difference in the world. So we have been experimenting with new ways of being pastors, new ways of worshiping, new ways of being the Church. It has been a wild ride, but so beautiful. Strangers have become friends and then those friends have joined us in our experimenting and trusted us with their faith journey— and we have trusted them with our’s. I am grateful for the community that has begun to form and hopeful of the community we will come in the weeks, months, and years ahead. I am so proud of how my kids have adjusted to this new way– how they ask hard questions, have dialogue with adults, and share their doubts and their faith with each other and people 50+ years older. But I would be lying if I said that it has all been easy. The main problem is that I am a high beam flashlight fan— I like to know the path of the journey for the next … forever. I want all the steps laid out and then I just want to check them off as we progress forward. That just seems easier… That isn’t this journey though— forget knowledge of the step by step—- we don’t even fully know what the end goal is, at least not what we this new community will look like when all is said in done. We know what we want it to feel like, and the freedom we want people to experience when they are a part of it, but God is revealing a little bit at a time of what that will actually be. That is a new space for me to exist in, it is uncomfortable and it pokes at my anxiety around not being in control. I find myself having a similar dialogue as the Psalmist — “sure we need to secure funding for the next three years” (hear in there the anxiety and doubt), “When God calls, God also provides” (the confident proclamation of God’s promised presence), “there isn’t a good space for us to meet… but of course God will provide the space we need,” and the back and forth continues. Knowing the future takes a lot of energy and anxiety, and in the end is an impossible task. When I remember that truth, I can find peace in the knowledge that God’s vision is better than my own. God is here in this moment, helping me, helping us to know the next right step. What comes of this ministry, what comes of my life, that is not for me to know right now. But for now I can be confident that God will illuminate the path in God’s good and slow timing. I am practicing waiting on the Lord.
I don’t think I am alone in my unease. We all have a tendency to want to know the future— that the people we love will be healthy and happy, that we will be hired for the right job, that the basic needs of our family will be met, that our relationships will grow stronger… We don’t like the “what ifs” and moments of uncertainty or doubt can cause us to question everything we have known and trusted thus far. When we don’t know the whole path, we begin to question whether God is present at all— almost demanding that we MUST know in order to have faith. But that isn’t how faith works. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr summed it up when he said “Faith is taking the first step, even when you can’t see the end of the staircase.” Let us step into the future, knowing that God will illuminate what we need to see to proceed with faith, free of fear, confident that God is with us. Let us wait on the Lord together.
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