As the visions during
the night continued, I saw One
like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient
One and was presented before him, He received dominion, glory, and kingship;
nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that
shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true
child of Israel. There is no duplicity
in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do
you know me?” Jesus answered and said to
him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” (John 1:47-48)
Piety
Known
A Blessing
First
we will
need grace.
Then
we will
need courage.
Also
we will
need
some
strength.
We will
need
to die a
little
to what we
have
always
thought,
what we
have allowed
ourselves
to see
of
ourselves,
what we
have built
our beliefs
upon.
We will
need this
and more.
Then
we will
need
to let it
all go
to leave
room enough
for the
astonishment
that will
come
should we
be given
a glimpse
of what the
Holy One sees
in seeing
us,
knows
in knowing
us,
intricate
and
unhidden
no part of
us
foreign
no piece of
us
fashioned
from other
than love
desired
discerned
beheld
entirely
all our
days.
Study
Some days it feels like we live in the midst of
chaos. Hurricane Harvey. Towns destroyed. Homes swept away by floodwaters or rendered
uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
Then Hurricane Irma. Perhaps not
as bad as first predicted but nevertheless devastating in its power to knock
out electricity to millions and cause damage to homes over an entire
state. After that, Hurricane Maria. The island nation of Dominica brought to its
knees. Puerto Rico with no power on the
entire island and an infrastructure left in tatters. Year of rebuilding ahead.
If your attention should wander from The Weather
Channel, other news is equally disturbing.
Threats of nuclear war and annihilation bandied about by world leaders. The things each of us have going on closer to
home that disturb our inner peace.
But chaos isn’t anything new. Daniel wrote in the context of a world where
foreign empires didn’t think twice about wreaking havoc on and destroying the
lives of God’s people. Be they
Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians or Greeks, it seemed like there was always
some empire wanting to stir things up and swallow the Hebrew people whole in
their pursuit of expanded domination and power.
Daniel’s vision, described in our first reading, brought
hope to people. Yes, God, the Ancient
One, is enthroned in heaven. But God
never leaves us to drown in our troubles in this world. In one of Daniel’s visions, we see someone
like a son of man arriving on the clouds of heaven. He is adored and glorified. He is served by peoples from every place on
the globe. His kingdom will have no end.
And in today’s Gospel reading, we see how personal
God’s involvement is in our lives. There
is nothing like being known through and through the way Jesus knew
Nathanael. As Jan Richardson writes in
her blessing, to be known by God is to be seen as fashioned solely out of love,
to be very much wanted and desired by God and to be “beheld entirely all our
days.”
Action
Offer to God whatever has your head spinning or
your heart in turmoil. Take advantage of
that peaceful moment to gratefully bask in the knowledge that you are known,
loved, and desired by the One who created you and brought you into the world.
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