Living Through a Flash Flood – Brad Jersak

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A dear friend responded to the news (plural) of the day and how that news bombards us like a flash flood. He lamented, “We’re in a real mess.”

We need to think about how we are going to live neck deep during the current social, political, and religious torrent.

To Christians, No, we will not be ‘raptured’. That’s a 19th century fantasy based in a strange vision and a dubious interpretation of a few isolated texts. And believing we would be rescued from the world and from our greatest fears only deepened the flood in devastating ways. One simple example is the loud rapture-Christian opposition to the very peace-building Jesus called for because we worried that peace = the one world government and one world government of the Antichrist.

To activists, carry on. You’ve seen that we can’t sit around waiting for solutions to fall out of heaven. But please don’t imagine you can convert narcissist powers (political, corporate, or digital) through your outcry. The principalities and powers don’t care. Indeed, hegemonies are hostile to resistance, by definition. Yes, our cry for peace and justice and a better world matters. But it’s not magical.

What then? Despair? Nope.

Here’s a modest proposal—and modesty is absolutely key: Be and become who and what you want humanity to be and to look like, one seedling at a time.

“But I can’t.”

Fair. We can’t redeem our own mess—not even our own messy hearts and minds. We’ve proven than over and over.

But we can perhaps attend to simple practices—moments of attentiveness, acts of kindness, little ‘No’s’ to the demands of our ego, a prayer for help amid our cravings, unselfish friendship, empathy, a turn back toward love. These are ways to say ‘Yes’ to the Grace that only awaits our consent—to the One who makes us the very miracle we wish for.

I am powerless against the flood, but I am able (and therefore responsible) to lift my eyes to the face of Grace.

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