Soaked In Goodness

Mark 6: 1-6

He left that place and came to his home town, and his disciples followed him. On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.

In my last reflection I talked about how belief, no matter how great it is, cannot dictate to God what he should specifically be doing in any situation. He will do what is good. But, are we able to block God’s power and action in our lives through a lack of belief or a lack of willingness to accept his goodness? Certainly.

You may recall that I quoted the Latin tag, “Bonum est difusivum sui”, of which one translation is, “The good capable of spreading, spreads to those capable of receiving it.” If there is no openness to God moving and working in a person’s life and no willingness to believe, God will not force that person to receive his gift of goodness, the gift of himself. He will definitely present himself and his gifts to people and give them opportunities to accept his love but lots of people have seen the power of the Lord at work and have remained unmoved.

Think of a rock in water. Even though it is completely immersed in the water, the water does not soak into it and never softens it. When it comes out of the water, the water runs off of it and the rock is as hard and impenetrable as it was before. Now think of a sponge in water. The sponge may have been quite hard and brittle before it was plunged into the water but as the water soaks into it, it permeates the sponge, making it soft and pliable. It becomes like a vessel of that water, holding the water and dripping it everywhere. Belief, then, is a quality that transforms us from a hard, brittle mass into a soft, saturated bearer of God’s goodness. We all know many people whom we would label as rocks, people who have hardened their hearts and refuse to allow God’s goodness to penetrate and soften them -  although we really don’t have the insight to judge as to whether someone is actually a rock or if they are a brittle sponge that is being slowly saturated. God can and does work soft and long on rock hard hearts .

But, what about us? Can we not be dense rocks sometimes?

The moment we decide we know exactly what God should be doing in any situation is the moment we begin to form a crusty rock like shell around us. The moment our limited perceptions dictate our expectations, we restrict our ability to soak up goodness or even recognize it.

The people in Jesus’ hometown thought they knew all about Jesus.  They thought they knew who he was and what his real job was and how he should be leading his life. They could not see beyond that. Even though they recognized that he was expressing great wisdom and that he was capable of performing deeds of power, they just couldn’t get over their deeply ingrained ideas about what the Messiah should look like and Jesus, their next door neighbor, just wasn’t fitting into the expected pattern.  To the people, two plus two should equal four and Jesus was a five. Jesus couldn’t saturate them with his goodness because they were rock-hard and immoveable within their preconceived ideas.

A few years ago I had my two grandsons visiting me. One was 14 months and the other was18 months. They were both at that stage where when their little minds decided they wanted something and it didn’t immediately happen in the way they expected it to happen, they would blow a fuse.  They would plop down on their little bottoms, refuse to move and then wail. I especially remember one time when their respective mothers said to them, “Do you want to go outside?” and what was meant was that they were going to be dressed and taken in the car to go to a playground. Both of these little guys headed for the deck door, assuming that they were going to go outside on the deck, a favorite daily activity for them both. When their moms led them away from the deck door and began to put shoes on them, you should have heard the screaming.

Going out, getting in the car and heading off to a park where there are swings, a slide and all sorts of other amazing things to discover and experience was infinitely more exciting and pleasurable than going out on the deck. However, these little guys had a certain idea in their heads and this preconceived idea, this immediate perception, made them like little rocks. They weren’t remotely interested in finding out what was really going to happen. What a struggle it was to get them into socks and shoes and out the particular door they weren’t expecting to open up to them.

Do we ever get certain ideas about what should be happening and then have a melt down when it’s all turned upside down? Usually we assume that things are going wrong. We get all rock hard and start to dig our heels in instead of saying, “Wait a minute. This isn’t what I was expecting but the Lord must have something infinitely more beautiful in store.”  The moment we turn ourselves away from set preconceptions and open ourselves to God’s plan, we become sponges. Even better than that, we become adventurers into the kingdom of God’s present moment goodness. We learn how to move through unexpected doors, take risks, explore, discover and anticipate new and different horizons with him and in him.

Like my grandsons, we need to learn to see that there are now, and will always be, many new doors through which we are called to venture. We need to take the risk of believing that God’s power and goodness is vaster and deeper than what we see in front of us. We need to let go of everything we think is the best plan and let go of what we think God will look like when he manifests himself in the midst of our ordinary lives. Very often he looks so ordinary that instead of rejoicing in his presence, we become offended or miss him completely. 

Belief, then, could be described in this way: it is a willingness and openness to look for and see God in everything. It is being very attentive to the present moment and to all God’s infinite possibilities in everything and everyone we see, touch, hear, experience and think about. Belief is a softness of spirit and a wideness of heart. Belief makes us realize that the whole world and everything that’s happening is God’s powerful venue, a place where he can be encountered anywhere and at anytime.

Belief softens our innate crustiness, our rigid expectations and our resistance to metanoia. Belief is the water of new life and new beginnings.    

Soak it in.