A Table in the Wilderness

Beloved in Christ,

The psalm appointed for Morning Prayer today is a section of Psalm 78, that long, sprawling poem that rehearses the major moments and patterns of God's relationship with Israel through history. Reciting it gives one a sense of God's constant and unfailing provision through all of the ups, downs, uncertainties, and joys of life as a community. It's an unmistakable restatement of how God remains committed to us, even when we are at our very worst. Verse 19 reminds us that "They railed against God and said,/'Can God set a table in the wilderness?'" Everyone praying the psalm knows, of course, that God did set a table in the wilderness. As hard as this past year or so has been, I hope you, like me, have been given many, many moments where you saw God set a table in that wilderness, and I hope you were nourished by rich, unexpected food. 

While we are slowly but clearly emerging from the long wilderness of pandemic, our lives, our churches, and our world can and do still feel like wilderness in so many different ways. One way to read the whole arc of scripture is the story of how humanity is in a permanent state of wandering and uncertainty, from our expulsion from Eden until the promised new heavens and new earth are fully realized. So often the way we damage ourselves, one another, and the creation itself is by trying to impose a false sense of certainty and order on a world that is always temporary and passing. Praying through all seventy-two verses of Psalm 78 is an invitation to let go and rest in the power of God to hold, sustain, and renew us. 

The painful, bad, but unavoidable news is that none of us ever know what is around the next corner, or how journeys we have begun will finally play out. The great good news is that God's love and mighty power to save will always be found in the midst of all of it. Whatever wilderness we face together as followers of Jesus, whatever desert you might even now be lost in, no matter how much we rail against God, when we let go of our attempts to force solutions and resolutions and insist on our own way, we just might find we have made room for the feast of nourishing love God is always laying out before us.                 

Grace and Peace,
The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in MN