Real gratitude isn’t about fulfilling an obligation. Even to God. Gratitude lives in the gap that opens when the way things are exceeds the way we expected them to be. And Jesus wants us to live in that gap.
Jeremiah teaches us that everyday life, the very stuff, subject, and essence of country music – our Monday through Saturday lives of working hard and living hard, are not separate from the sacred. They can be and are called to be just as sacred as what we do here each Sunday.
His stare is blank and stoic and the subject of his gaze seems to be me, as I, of course, look into my phone and back at him… And either my discomfort or the boy’s unflinching look seems to ask, “So what kind of attention do you pay and to what do you pay it?”
The ancient Job conceded to the whirlwind, “Your wisdom is too great for me, beyond my understanding,” but the modern Job rejects any narrative larger than his own understanding. What to say of a community like ours, in a time like ours, gathered around the celebration of a holy mystery?
God is not done with us yet. We are all vessels of hope, healing, and imagination. In spite of and perhaps because of all our imperfections, God still longs to cradle us and mold us, to lift us up to the beauty of our immortality as nothing less than holy dirt.