What Do YOU Want? (Hint: You Already Know...)

Watch today’s installment on YouTube!

When I first looked at today’s scripture a couple of weeks ago, I could not have imagined where our society would be on this first day of June. In today’s lectionary reading from the epistles, we encounter what I consider to be the apostle Paul’s greatest work - Romans Eight - and specifically that portion of the discourse that talks about the sufferings of this present time.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, let me remind us all that when we read scripture, it is vital that we read it in context and not try to rip it out into making it about us and about today. That being said, as Paul is writing to the church in Rome, he is acknowledging the suffering of those in the Roman church who are facing persecution (real persecution, not the silly stuff too many church folk in America call persecution) and addressing it with a word of hope.

I could go on and on with a whole segment on hope strictly out of the promise of what is to come. To continue in that vein, though, would be to miss something extremely profound AND extremely urgent not only in this time but in all times. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s take a look at four short verses -

From Romans eight, verses eighteen through twenty-one:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Waiting with eager longing…yes…I think as we consider the murder of a man in Minneapolis, as we consider the absolute chaos that has engulfed our world during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we consider the absolutely bitter dysfunction of a two-party system that is doing more to shred us than to unite us, as we consider the personal hells that many of us are experiencing even if we are keeping it to ourselves…the question arising from those four short verses is more profound and has the potential to be more transformative than we might think at first blush:

For what do we eagerly yearn? In other words, what is it that you want more than anything else in the world?

If in the midst of all the stuff breaking loose in the world we do not take advantage of this time to explore or explore again for what we most eagerly yearn, then what’s the point?

Rather than drive you to a specific conclusion, let me offer you a little advice that I find helps me in wrestling with this question - 

What do your words (in person and online) and your actions (or non-actions) tell the rest of the world you yearn for the most?

What emotions well up within you when you watch a nine-minute video from Minneapolis?

What emotions well up within you when you see whatever politician you loathe the most (and let’s be honest, in most cases it’s loathing no matter how much lipstick we try to put on that pig) appears either in writing or in video?

I’m going to just prime the pump by asking those few questions. I think you can take it from there.

And be not discouraged, be not dismayed. Rather than giving the answer we want to have, let’s lay it out there and through the honesty of our answer begin the process of acknowledging what needs healing and transforming - and tap into the humility needed to seek the help we need from God and others to get where we know God wants to take us in our hearts and minds.

NOTHING will change if we are not open to being changed, and through being changed be agents of change for others.

Let us yearn for that…