Friday, May 29, 2015

2 Corinthians 4:1-12

“…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”

Do you identify more with your strengths or your weaknesses? How easy it is to define ourselves by what we do well, instead of finding value in our vulnerabilities. In today’s reading, Paul offers a different vision. Animating his life and ministry is the deeply mystical pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection. “We have this treasure in clay jars,” Paul writes, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” In and through our vulnerabilities and weaknesses, God’s love brings power and new life.

            The Sufi mystic poet, Hafiz, captures so well the reality of vulnerabilities opening up places of new life in us:

“It used to be
That when I would wake in the morning
I could with confidence say,

‘What am ‘I’ going to
Do?’

That was before the seed
Cracked open.

Now Hafiz is certain:
There are two of us housed
In this body,

Doing the shopping together in the market and

Tickling each other
While fixing the evening’s food.

Now when I awake
All the internal instruments play the same music:

‘God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do
For the world
Today?’

– Hafiz

In what ways are the seeds of your life being “cracked open” to reveal God’s life? 

- David Shumaker