Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time

…within sixty years and five,

Ephraim shall be crushed, no longer a nation.
Unless your faith is firm
you shall not be firm!

William Faulkner might have been speaking of the mid-east when he wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” If Isaiah could promise that Ephraim would be crushed in sixty-five years, I suppose the future is not very far off either.

Sixty-five years ago we finished the war with our good friends, the Japanese and Germans. In another sixty-five years we can expect to be allies of Iran and Northern Korea. Through it all, God’s word remains the same:

Take care you remain tranquil and do not fear;
let not your courage fail.

So much of our political and social life is driven by fear. Especially since Americans dropped out of social life and tuned to television, we have become a nation of terrified recluses. Public space is regarded as dangerous; it’s good for nothing but transit from one private space to the next. Children are forbidden to ride their bicycles in public, and women dare not walk in the evening. The more withdrawn we are from the public, the more gumshoes stories and local crime news we watch, the more frightened we become. 

Fear sells. It sells locks and chains and fences and security systems and guns of every description. It sells political ideas that would be absurd without it. It persuades people to do stupid, unreasonable things. Peace, contentment, sobriety, sanity and trust in God have no appeal to a nation of anxious consumers. 

Twenty years and thirty pounds ago, I was jogging in Minnesota by myself on a country road, when a motorcyclist decided to have a little fun. He came up behind me, swerving to the left side of the road, and ripped past me, missing me by inches. It scared the hell out of me. There was nothing I could do about it but keep running.

Ten or twenty minutes later he did it again! Then I got mad. 
"There's a pattern here!" I said. 
So I stopped – something a jogger hates to do – and picked up a fist-sized rock. I thought, when he comes by again I’ll just toss this rock in the air and let him run into it.

So now I was scared and mad and running, feeling very vulnerable. With a rock tight in my fist I was holding onto fear.

After another twenty minutes of that, I realized I was not enjoying myself. Carrying the fear sapped all the joy out of running. So I dropped the rock and surrendered my right of revenge to God.

The motorcyclist never returned, and I went on my way happier and more free. But I learned a lesson from it:

In you, Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

In your justice rescue and deliver me; listen to me and save me!

Be my rock and refuge, my secure stronghold; for you are my rock and fortress.

My God, rescue me from the power of the wicked, from the clutches of the violent.

You are my hope, Lord; my trust, God, from my youth.

On you I depend since birth; from my mother's womb you are my strength; my hope in you never wavers. Psalm 71