Hey friends, again, we haven't met.
I'm Josh, the joy of being serving as a pastor here at the
Garden and I'm glad to be together today.
What a delightful sunny day out there.
As you have already heard, there is a volunteer opportunity for
you. There's a lunch happening after
that volunteer opportunity if you want to hang out further and
enjoy some of the sunshine. Come, come chill with us after
the gathering today. We love to love to kick it.
And this morning we are in Daniel chapter 6.
We're going to be wrapping up our series through the book of
Daniel titled Faithful in Babylon that we've been trekking
through over these last five weeks.
And this morning we finally arrive at what is definitely the
most famous story in this book, one of the most famous stories
in all of the Hebrew Bible, story of Daniel and the lion's
den. And I hope to convince you this
morning in the next 20-30 minutes or so that this is not
mostly a story about the lions, although lions are cool.
You know, my daughter enjoys the Franklin Park Zoo.
Lions are rat. It's also not really a story
about, like, Daniel being courageous, although certainly
Daniel in this story is courageous.
But I think this story actually points us to something that's
relevant for each one of us today, and that is that.
That this is a story about how small, faithful, resolute acts
can really shake the foundations even of an empire.
Over the last couple of months in my neighborhood of
Dorchester, where I live, I've started to see something that I
didn't see before. It's an unwelcome sight
candidly. And that is that as I'm walking
my daughter to school or driving around the neighborhood now,
it's not unusual for me to see ICE vehicles.
Sometimes they say departmental Homeland Security on the side.
Sometimes it's Border Patrol. Sometimes it's just a a series
of black Suburbans without estate plates.
And every time I'm I'm driving or I'm walking and I see these
cars usually going by in a flash, like immediately I have
this like tightness in my chest, this anxiety that that comes up
and I'm like, what's going on? What's about to go down?
Who are they here for? What should I do in this moment?
My mind immediately jumps to Raul, leader of one of the
churches that we helped to start over an Eastie resurrection.
Raul is here in the country legally, but a few months ago
was detained and kept in jail for a couple of weeks, separated
from his family at a routine immigration hearing.
And I'm glad to say that Raoul was was eventually through a lot
of prayers and petitions and and wrestling was released and is
back. And I saw him a couple weeks
ago. But I wonder for the others like
him who, who haven't done anything wrong, but my neighbors
in Dorchester who are Cape Verdean or Haitian or
Guatemalan, I wonder what their experience is going to be like.
Are these vehicles there for some of them?
And, and I have this, this wave of anxiety that comes up in me
as I consider this reality that is unwelcome.
I'll share this with you, not so you can be worried about me, but
because I noticed something that I think is important for us in
this dynamic. And, and the sources of your
anxiety and overwhelm may well be different than mine.
I don't expect that we all have the same story or the same
situation, but I know enough of you to know that that a lot of
us walk through the world feeling overwhelmed.
Maybe for you, it's the the questions about like, hey, how,
how AI is going to affect your economic prospects.
Maybe it's a mountain of credit card debt.
Maybe for you, it's the question of singleness and whether you'll
find that person. Maybe it's a family member or an
individual who's struggling with a chronic health condition.
And every time you think of them, you have this, this surge
of adrenaline, this surge of anxiety that comes up in your
chest and you're not sure what to do.
And often in these times I find for my, for myself, like I want
to swing to, to like 1 pole or the other right part of me
immediately in these moments of crisis, I want to, I want to
have a response that is equal to the source of my stress.
I'm kind of like an, an organiser, A mobiliser.
So I immediately start to systemically map out a plan for
how we're going to like respond to the immigration crisis.
And sometimes I'll go like really intensely for a week or
two and then I'm completely exhausted and burnt out.
More often I, I, I feel like, honestly, I just want to like go
home and pull the covers over my head, watch some comedians on
Netflix, you know, on my phone, right?
The latest roast that came out. It's, it's just like, it's,
it's, it's a lot. It's so overwhelming.
And so I, I want to check out and numb out and retreat because
I don't know what to do. This morning we find Daniel
facing problems that are very different than ours.
But the hero of our text here in chapter 6 has something in
common with us. He's facing an impossible, an
overwhelming reality at this point in the story.
Daniel has lived for a long time.
He's navigated multiple different emperors and and even
the regime is different. Babylon has fallen.
But now we've got Persia, new boss, same situation for all of
you, hoping that like a change in administration will solve
everything. It's not always how it goes.
Certainly that's Daniel's experience here, right?
He is now again at a high level in this administration, in the
Persian administration. Now he's one of the the most
important people in the land. But but his power, his privilege
does not protect him from the reality of what happens.
We see here that just as the king plans to set him over the
whole Kingdom in verse three that his rivals essentially
hatch a plot to take him down and they're successful.
In verse 10, we read that Daniel learns of of a new decree that
the king has made. He opens his iPhone and opens
his news reader of choice. And there's another terrible
headline. This one says if you pray to
anyone other than the king, you get fed to the lions.
That's a bad headline for Daniel, right?
And I don't know how I would react in that situation, but I
can imagine that Daniel had a lot of feels all of a sudden
that that that anxiety spiked. And, and perhaps there was the
question of like, how what do you do right?
Do you, do you organize among all of the other satraps to try
and kind of get the compassion and sympathetic people to
overthrow the bad guys to, to enact just laws?
Do you just hunker down and retreat into your basement and
take a hiatus from your routine of prayer?
Well, we read how Daniel responds.
In verse 10. We see that when Daniel learned
that the decree had been published, he went home to his
upstairs room where the windows open toward Jerusalem.
Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving
thanks to God. Daniel's choice, His response
here is to break the law. Daniel does what he has always
done. He commits to the way of
integrity. Now, you could read this, some
people have as like an act of defiance like this is this is a
protest. This is a like in your face
Darius, You can't tell me what to do, bro.
I'm going to get out here. I'm going to I'm going to do
this public protest of prayer. But there's a key line in the
text right here at the end of verse 10 that puts Daniel's
action in perspective. The text says he prayed just as
he had done before. I think this is important.
See, Daniel here is not out trolling for a battle.
He he didn't go looking for a megaphone.
He simply refused to change his rhythm at the dictates of the
regime. He kept doing the small,
ordinary thing that he'd been doing for years, even if he
knows it will get him thrown to the lions.
And I think this is really important because it's easy for
us to read the story of Daniel and to imagine it as kind of
like a courage story, like Daniel is a moral exemplar of
somebody who is really courageous and brave, and we
should be brave like Daniel. Of course Daniel is brave.
And sure, that's maybe a good take away, but I don't think
that's the main point or purpose of this text because the text
isn't telling us about a dramatic decision.
It's telling us about a continued practice.
Daniel doesn't become faithful here in Chapter 6.
He'd been faithful like we've seen this week after week
through this series. As he's confronted with
challenge, he continues to root into his identity.
He continues to turn towards God.
He continues to show up. The dramatic moment exposes the
life that was already there. And honestly, I think this is
really important because for us, as as we've already been
discussing this morning, I think when we are faced with an
overwhelming reality, whatever your overwhelming reality is,
right? In fact, go ahead and and take a
moment right now, consider one thing in your life that causes
you stress, one thing that feels overwhelming, crushing, like a
burden. You don't know what to do.
Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a question about your
future, right? But there's, there's something
in all of our lives that we hold with a heaviness we're not sure
what to do about. When we think about it, when we
sit with it, anxiety comes up within us.
And I think for many of us, we want to, we want to generate
from that anxiety a fix that will solve the problem.
Like we, we think we need a big reaction that is, that is right
sized to the problem, that can solve for it, that can take care
of it such that we'll be OK. I have to tell you, I've started
to grow a little bit suspicious of big responses, at least in
myself. I'm not saying that every big
response is this way, but I've noticed that a lot of times that
the big responses, the responses that seek to control, to fix, to
resolve, have less to do with love or integrity or
authenticity and more to do with relieving the anxiety that we
are carrying. Like we want to over function,
we want to power up, we want to resolve the situation because
it's overwhelming. And so we think we need a, a, a
big response to solve for it. And it's actually a dynamic
because so often we ping pong back and forth, don't we,
between the big response on the one side, the anxious response
that over functions and then the, the collapse, the shutdown,
the like, well, this is too big, this is too scary.
Let me just, I don't know if there's anything behind me right
now. Let me just back up and retreat.
I can't deal with it. I can't face it, I can't sit
with it. And so I need to.
I need to get small, I need to get away.
I just need to go back to my life.
Meanwhile, Daniel takes a simple approach.
He doesn't invent something novel.
He doesn't become someone else. He just keeps faithfully praying
three times every day. In the late twenty 10s in
southern Arizona, there was a crisis at the border.
Thousands of migrants were crossing and dying.
The federal government, in an attempt to kind of prevent the
migration that was happening, had decided on a border strategy
called Prevention through Deterrence.
And what this strategy did was it would funnel everyone away
from the the major crossings and into the heart of the Snoring
Desert, one of the most vicious places on the continent people
would go anyway. The thought was this would deter
people. It didn't.
It just killed people. So thousands of people are
attempting this impossible, arduous crossing and actually
literally dying not of bullets, but of dehydration in the water.
It was in this moment that Doctor Scott Warren, in a small
ministry called No More Deaths. No Mas Muertes did something
that, on the face of it was kind of small, kind of humble.
They started trunking cans of water up into these deep hiking
trails and just dropping them, just leaving little snacks,
little packets of water, things along the trails that they
expected that the migrants would pass through.
And they did this. Even as they did this, they
found that the Border Patrol was going through and slashing the
jugs they were kicking over the water can, sometimes filming it
and posting it online. And in fact, the the the Border
Patrol, the federal government began aggressively criminalizing
any attempts at humanitarian aid for those who were crossing.
It was messing up with their strategy of prevention through
deterrence. So they repurposed some existing
laws and changed some enforcement mechanisms and and
decided that they would arrest Doctor Warren and his
colleagues. They would arrest him and charge
them with 20 years in federal prison, a felony offence for
giving water and socks and canned food and shelter to
people. As they were attempting this
crossing, Doctor Warren was in fact arrested.
He was brought up in charges. But here's I think where this
becomes so interesting because of Nomos Muertes, I'm definitely
saying that wrong. But because of the the work of
this small organization and and this one geologist who was in
his spare time taking breaks from being a professor to hike
up into the mountains, the federal government had to go to
court to argue on the record that it was a more serious and
dire offence to litter in a wildlife preserve by leaving
hands of water than it was to attempt life saving aid.
The government argued this. Ultimately the judge decided
that this was an act of free speech.
It was protected that he as in his religious freedom was
constitutionally protected to be able to offer people who are
dying water. This began to to change the
fabric of the situation. Now, look, there were lots of
people who still died in that desert.
His actions did not solve the entire border crisis, but they
did make a difference for some people.
And they did expose the frailty and the fear and the evil of
systems of empire. And see, this is what Daniel's
prayer does. Like it doesn't shatter
everything, but by opening his windows, he's not retreating
into his basement. By standing there in public
three times daily, facing towards Jerusalem, the place
that he is from his home, the place which he has been exiled
to, and then turning and attuning his heart towards the
Lord, calling out for provision, calling out for rescue.
Daniel does something that showcases the frailty of empire,
an empire that is afraid of an old man who goes to pray.
Daniel just does the small thing.
And I think this is so important because sometimes, like, it's
easy to read a text like this and, and, and, and flip on one
side or the other. On the one hand, to say, like
Daniel, you didn't do enough. You've got to do more.
You've got to resist. And friends, there are people on
social media who will tell you that your small acts of
faithfulness are not enough. If you didn't, if you didn't
sign all of the things, if you didn't post all of the things,
if you didn't take all of the actions, if you didn't show up
at all of the events, if you didn't help all of the people or
that it's not enough, right? There are voices who will tell
you this, but there's also voices and sometimes voices in
the church that will just say like, you know what?
No big deal. Like all you can do is thoughts
and prayers about it. Just stay home, right?
Don't worry about it. Just pray about it.
And Daniel does pray about it, but he does so in public.
He continues to do so in public. He doesn't duck this into the
dining room. He, as an administrative
official actively engaged in the politics of the land, defies the
order and breaks the law. And this here, I think, points
us to a third way where we can take small acts of faithfulness
that have the ability to shake even the foundations of empire.
Some of you may know the story of Vaclav Havel, the Czech
dissident. Havel lived in Soviet area,
Czechoslovakia, under kind of the last vestiges of the
communist regime there. And the communist regime in
Czechoslovakia at the time demanded total compliance.
Everyone had to act as if they believed that everything that
the state said was true. There were all of these ways in
which people had to signal compliance and and Havel argued
for a posture which he described as living within the truth.
Havel was a poet in a playwright and he he wrote a story.
He told a story of a of a green grocer, a grocery store owner
who who ran a small stand for fruits and vegetables and in his
window, among kind of the onions and the carrots that the state
had provided A placard for the grocery store owner to display.
The the placard said workers of the world unite, a sign that
simply in a small way reinforced the communist ideology of the
day and demanded that everyone fall in line.
And of course, it was a small thing, but but by posting up
this sign in the store that the grocery store owner would signal
to the police, the secret police, to his neighbors, to his
colleagues, he would say, hey, I'm walking in step with you.
I am not a threat. Don't worry about me, right?
I'm on your team. Even though, of course, the the
grocery store owner in Hobble story doesn't care about the
global proletariat. He doesn't even think about it.
He's just trying to save his skin.
He's just trying to go about his business.
But Hobble argued that the the whole regime is held up, propped
up by 1000 grocery store owners who all put the sign up in their
window in order to get along. So Hubble asked provocatively.
Well, like what happens one day if the grocery store owner
doesn't put the sign up? He's not starting a revolution,
organizing A protest, setting up a political party.
He just refuses to participate in the lie.
And by setting that boundary, by refusing to participate in the
lie, by choosing a pathway of faithfulness, things could be
shaken. In fact, Havel's story was so
concerning to the authorities that they immediately jailed him
for this. But it worked, certainly wasn't
only on him. But the communist regime came
down. It collapsed not through
revolution, but by ordinary people, one greengrocer at a
time, refusing to put up the sign.
I think Daniel opening his wisdom windows to Jerusalem, I
think Daniel is standing there three times a day as he always
had, is not a big thing. It's just a quiet, consistent,
faithful thing done in public in a way that begins to shift
things that that that denounces the lie that resists it, that
demands that everyone fall in line in compliance.
It's it's like Havel's story, in which the greengrocer doesn't
display the sign. It's like Scott Warren walking
into the desert with water jugs. And I know that this is
challenging for us to accept small acts of faithfulness,
because small acts of faithfulness don't adequately
calm our nervous systems. I have all this anxiety.
What shall I do? If I just do a small thing, it
doesn't fix it and I still have to sit with the anxiety.
So I must do more or I must detach and retreat.
But Daniel was doing something important here.
He is training himself over and over to be faithful, to show up.
And then, and this is where I think that this is so important
that that this is not primarily a story about courage and
bravery because yes, to be brave is important.
But but what Daniel does here in this moment of crisis is
downstream of that because his verse 10 tells us that Daniel
went to his upstairs room and prayed just as he had before.
The dramatic moment here doesn't make Daniel faithful.
It exposes the faithfulness that is already present.
Daniel had been building a spiritual practice of attuning
himself to God, of remembering who he is, not an administration
official in Persia trying to climb the ladder and be
successful, but a Jewish man in exile.
He he'd been turning his heart and spirit to the Lord over and
over again through decades. He had shown up faithfully in
response to to trial after trial, persecution and threat.
As we've seen in chapters one through 6 here, each week there
has been a challenge that has confronted Daniel and his
friends, often times at the risk of their very lives.
And each time they choose a pathway of faith and
faithfulness showing up. I don't know if you've ever
spent time with older Christians, like people in their
60s and 70s who've who've been with God not for like a year or
two or or 10 or 20, but for like 40 or 50I don't know that many
people like this, but I do know a few.
I'm so thankful for them. Like I'll tell you one thing
about them is that they are not anxious like they're, they're
not anxious about anything like they have this, this grounded
hope. They have this deep sense of
joy. They have this expectation that
God will show up and come through.
And they didn't get it, friends, by just like believing the Bible
harder, although they certainly did that.
They didn't get that just by being brave in one moment,
although they certainly did that.
They've become these kind of people through decades of
consistent time with Jesus. Time making spiritual practices
their reality. Time in community with other
people who reinforce what is true.
Showing up over and over again until at the core of their
being, they really are. People who believe.
Not just up here, but in their nervous systems, in their souls,
in their guts. People of faithful courage who
aren't easily rocked or swayed or thrown about.
James Clear, the author of habit formation fame, famously said,
if I can find the the quote here somewhere in this he famously
said that we do not rise to the level of our goals.
We fall to the level of our systems.
We don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level
of our systems. I think, friends, that so often
I want to be the kind of person that responds in the moment of
crisis with awesomeness. You know, I have great faith.
I have the ability to forgive epically.
I, I have the ability to, to, to stand there and pray for
healing. I have the ability to, to, to,
to courageously share my faith in that situation where it feels
risky. I have the ability to, to, to
boldly risk my own kind of well-being or standing or status
by being generous or by saying truth to power.
All of the kinds of things that we see Daniel and his friends do
here. But I think for many of us, we
we aspire to be these kinds of people, but we're not always
building in the formation that actually allows for it.
And so I think one of the questions of this text this
morning is, is like, who are you training to become in these
moments of stress? How are you training your soul
to numb out and detach by watching cat videos?
But sometimes me OK, like not throwing rocks at cat videos,
but but by like jumping into action and activism, by venting
to other people, right? When you think about that
stressor that you identified earlier, like how are you
responding to it? How are you training yourself to
respond to it? Who are you becoming as you sit
with the realities, the weight, the heaviness that exists all
around us, certainly by empire, but also just by living, trying
to make it another day in a family and relationships with
people. The world is heavy.
Friends are we people who are training our souls, who are
training our attention on Jesus, who are learning to look to him
over and over again such that in the moment of crisis we are the
people who will respond? You see, I wonder if who, how
Daniel would have shown up in this situation.
One of the thought experiments I had as I was preparing for this
talk was I got curious about the beard once again.
I got curious about the question of, like, what happens if Daniel
is just, you know, the guy who, like, is generally a good moral
Christian and, like, kind of praised before his meals most of
the time. And then the key king issues
this edict. Like, how do you think he shows
up in this moment? I, I don't know, but I suspect
he's like, well, you know, we're going to experiment with some
new spiritual practices this month.
You know, like, right, maybe maybe we'll pray, but I'm going
to try a different space in my house that is a bit more private
this month. Like perhaps I, it's so easy,
right? To begin to, to accommodate, to
try and try something new, to try and become someone new in
the moment of crisis. And it never works if we haven't
been training, if we haven't been preparing ourselves and our
souls for this kind of dependence on Jesus, of this
kind of returning to Jesus and running to Jesus, then in the
moment where we need it most, we're I'll equipped to do so.
And look, I named this as, as a, as a return to Jesus, as a
running to Jesus, because not only is that what we see Daniel
doing here in this text, he's opening his window to pray.
I I I think that's a beautiful example of one concrete way in
which small faithfulness takes is, is turning himself Godward.
What an interesting situation that that actually becomes a
protest against the regime here in Daniel chapter 6.
But but I name this because he needs God to solve the situation
like in any way. All right, this is not a viable
situation. Daniel does not in his own power
and strength have the ability to habit stack his way to the
defeat of the empire or the sealing of the mouths of the
lions. Like what we see in this text is
so incredible. It's so beautiful.
Like Daniel ultimately, of course, you know, the story is
thrown to the lions. He he goes into the den and of
course, he's not eaten. And this is something that
Daniel cannot manufacture. Like supernatural rescue has to
take place here. This is the piece that only God
can do. And of course, as we've talked
about in previous iterations of the series, God doesn't always
show up miraculously. Not everybody gets saved, but
this is the story that we see here and it cascades into
something so beautiful and so powerful.
It's not just that like Daniel was faithful and had good
habits, God intervenes, right? God meets him in that
orientation, God word. And I love how this unfolds,
right? The king, of course, is forced
to give to the order he's he's thrown.
And then we see in verse 18 that the king returns to his palace
and I love this. The most powerful man in the
empire spends all night not eating without any
entertainment. He can't sleep.
The king himself who issued the decree is like a wreck.
He's messed up worrying for Daniel.
And and we see what he asks here in verse 20.
He comes and he says to Daniel, has your God whom you serve
continually? The king has noticed Daniel's
practice, been able to rescue you from the lions.
This Pagan man, this king who is only interested in his own
power, who wants everyone to worship him, he is so astounded
by this man's faith, this man's courage, which was forged and
formed in continual practice, that even this Pagan king can't
escape the question. Maybe Daniel's God is the real
deal. Like if this guy believes so
much, if this guy keeps living this way, maybe God, the God of
Daniel really can save. And then Daniel calls out in
verse 21, May the king live forever.
Not like you've done me any favours around the living
forever thing. But king, may you live for any.
May you live forever anyway. Turning the other cheek if I
ever saw it. My God, send his Angel and shut
the mouths of the lions. They haven't hurt me, your
Majesty. In verse 23, we see the king is
overjoyed. He gives orders to lift Daniel
out of the den and then check this.
This is crazy. Verse 24, the king or or in 24,
he commands the the the men who falsely accused Daniel to to be
thrown into the den. But in verse 25, he writes the
emperor to all the nations and peoples of every language in the
earth. May you prosper greatly.
I issue a decree that in every part of my Kingdom people must
fear and reverence the God of Daniel, for he is the living
God. Guys like Amen, like, yay, like,
how cool is this, right? And Daniel's God is proved to be
the real God, the living God, the the one of power.
Because he shows up, Daniel is rescued, and even the Pagan
king, even the systems with the force of an evil empire are
brought to their knees. To say there's something here
that we can't explain. There's something authentic.
Friends, what would it be like for you and for me to be the
kind of people that God can use? People who were so practiced in
turning our attention to God. Word that that under moments of
stress in challenging situations like like we live in a
challenging situation in a stressful city, some of us kind
of like that and some of us are completely taken out by that.
But it is the reality. And when we look around at at
those neighbors that Haley was talking about earlier, so many
people are anxious, stressed out, overwhelmed or or at least
over functioning in the rat race, right?
Trying to get ahead, trying to trying to manage it.
Maybe their strategies are still working at the moment, or we
find them numbed out and collapse because they've tried
and they've burnt out and now they don't know what to do.
I wonder what a witness would look like that just trained our
souls in such a way that we were people in our offices, in our
families, in our friend groups, in our neighborhoods that showed
up with grounded presence. Not anxious, not over
functioning, not needing to save the world, but looking to Jesus
with hope, faithfully turning our attention to Him, and then
taking small acts of faithfulness and love that
pointed to the Kingdom. Small acts that said, I get it.
You might come for me, you might throw me in jail, but I'm going
to refuse to put that sign about the proletariat in my grocery
store. You may charge me with a felony,
but I'm going to take a hike out in the woods and help somebody.
Not woods, I guess, but take a hike out into the desert and
help give water to somebody who's in danger of dying.
Friends, I want to be authentic this morning.
Sometimes responding in this way doesn't protect us.
It actually can take us into harm's way.
It forces us to sit with the anxieties of reality in a way
that doesn't over function and try and fix them or or bail out
and try and numb out. It demands that we become people
who train our souls to sit in the presence of Jesus.
If we do, I believe friends, that he will show up and that we
will get to see the power and beauty of God.
That others will look at our lives and say, Ashley Scott is
the real God. Mike is God is the real God.
Emmanuel Scott is is the real and living God.
I know it because I've seen it. That person has walked it out in
front of me. As the band comes this morning,
I want to invite you into a time of reflection.
We've got these carpets down here at the front.
If you were the kind of person who we are always inviting us
into our bodies here at the garden, if you're the kind of
person who wants to kneel or sit or or or or contemplate or
journal, you're welcome to come and use these spaces and stay
right in your seat where you're at.
I'll be up at the front here if you'd like to talk or pray with
somebody. But as the band begins to play
this first song, I want to invite you to consider 2
questions. The 1st is where am I feeling
the pressure today, right? Maybe it's big systems or maybe
it's like my relationship with my spouse, right?
Maybe it's a small or personal thing that's hidden that no one
else knows about. Where do you feel the pressure
today? What would it look like for you
to bring that? In fact, I want to invite you in
this moment right now to actually actively bring that,
that space of stress to Jesus and say Jesus, hey, I remember
who I am. I remember whose I am.
I want you to hold this for me. I, I, I, I want to renounce and
resist over functioning and trying to solve it or numbing
out and trying to avoid it. Would you be with me in this?
Then I want to invite you to ask Jesus a second question as you
share that with him. Go ahead and ask the Lord what
is the small act of faithfulness like?
I can't do everything. It's not my job to solve the
problems of the world. I'm way too small for that.
But what's my peace? God, what are you asking me this
week to do as relates to this area of overwhelm that I'm
sitting in? Would you do that?
Let me pray for us. And as the band begins to play
underneath, I want to invite you into this time of reflection and
response. Jesus, thanks for being bigger
than us. Thanks for having broader
shoulders. God, we can't carry the weight
of the world. The problems of our society and
our culture, even our own problems are so big they feel
crushing, exhausting, overwhelming.
God, I pray that we would be people who would repent of both
the over functioning, striving, trying to be the white knight,
the Saviour who takes on everything and solves
everything. Help us to live in our limits
and in our place, the place that you've given us, the place that
you've called us to. But God, I pray that we would
also not be people who check out, who avoid, who numb, who
just decide to to be an administrator or a geologist or
a poet and write about other things.
God would you help us to be people who turn to you and who
faithfully show up in the ways that you call us to, trusting
you that even small things can be used to shake the foundations
of empire.