Auditory War Zones

                Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded b God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (I Peter 1:3-7)

 

It’s a new year! You’ve survived the first day, while I’m writing this before 7 am on the morning after celebrations of midnight required 4 hours of reducing my world to an auditory warzone. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Grace had not chosen last night to become a “normal dog” and stress out over the sheer volume (quantity even more than loudness) of the sonic assault. And rather than praying for the people who were being so inconsiderate in their celebration, I was wondering for whom the barrage might justify the murder of the celebrants. Not in an overly malicious way, of course. I wasn’t imagining bathing in the blood of my victims, it was just an idle (and I hoped, distracting) legal exercise.

In other words, brand new year, same old world, same old people, same old me. I feel a little like the “snowflakes” who kneeled in the streets when Mr. Trump was elected and screamed. And like the many when COVID-19 first hit, who struggled though the fourteen days that were supposed to “flatten the curve” and make everything all better but didn’t. Or like the folks who listened to the amazing clearing of the waters in Venice, and dreamed of a whole new, clean world that they would find when they emerged from their residential cocoons as the moths of a new world.

I know, we know better, but are you disappointed yet? There’s supposed to be something “magical” about new years, new days, new starts. And Peter discusses this in today’s passage. The hope and expectation are natural because there is a new year, day, start, place, and condition out there. We’re not wrong to  -hope. We just tend to pin our hopes on the foolish things

It’s sort of like this. Last night, I took a picture of the last sunset of 2021. It was perfectly clear, not a cloud in the sky. This morning, there might not be a cloud in the sky, but the clouds that are on the ground obscure the view. Isn’t that often our problem? We want the sun or the moon to shine, and we get fog instead. The fog becomes the focus. God has failed us and the day has barely begun. After a couple hours, it will be sunny. What we need to do is learn to work while it’s “foggy” rather than giving up on our hopes and dreams because we can’t see the Son shining in all his glory through the fog of our lives, other people, and the world.