We notice, and we wonder, and we watch for patterns, remembering that our finite minds will always bump up against infinity. This unnerves and comforts, maybe in equal measure.
Both prophets urged people to pay attention to the place where they stood and the moment that was unfolding because if God is with us at all in any meaningful way, it is not as some abstract principle or distant force, but in the life we are actually living. In crumbling temples and audacious building projects. In lush vineyards and lousy crop returns, in typhoons and childbirth, in love, and war, and peace. That—whichever ‘that’ happens to be yours right now—is where God is. And that—whichever ‘that’ happens to be yours—is the moment on which God needs you to train your attention.
In the Beatitudes Jesus hands down to us, we identify with the poor and with those who have experienced or are experiencing loss and grief. When we are reviled and hurt, we even somehow find blessing within that, and we persevere, with God’s help. We keep going. We keep encouraging. We keep loving.
One day in Jericho, the salvation of the whole cosmos came to the house of a tax collector named Zacchaeus. I ask you, friends, what might it look like if the salvation of the whole cosmos came to your house or my house today?
God’s mercy doesn’t get portioned out in teaspoons, and it doesn’t pick and choose its beneficiaries against a careful checklist of deserving qualities. Everyone in the temple is doing the best they can; frankly, everyone outside the temple is too. They (and we) all go down to their homes in grace.