I hope your second week is treating you well, and that you are beginning to settle into your new routines (even a little bit). Transitions always take me a long time, but I love the feeling of getting into a new routine, especially when I’ve been anticipating it for a long time.
Part of the lectionary from this week is from Psalm 78. It lists many wonderful things that God has done, including “God split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. God made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers.”
Of all the lectionary passages this week, these verses resonated with me the most. I wish I knew what was going to happen next, when things are going to start feeling a little less horrible, and so on and so on. I imagine many of us feel this way. Uncertainty is so challenging!
And even in this yearning for certainty, these verses remind me that there are always unknown and unknowable things to come in our future. And some of these things will be good and beautiful and necessary, like water coming out of rocks in the wilderness. God is with us, even in the wilderness, and we can’t know what will happen in the future, except that God will still be with us. There will still be beauty and goodness too, some way, some how.
Thanks be to God!
Hannah Campbell Gustafson
Associate Chaplain for Christian and Interfaith Life