I enjoy the occasional sabbath stroll through the Palmetto Boardwalk at Goose Creek State Park near Washington, NC. I usually bring along my camera bag and capture images of the plants and creatures found in the marsh that surround the trail. Back in the fall of 2018 Hurricane Florence left it’s mark on everything, including the boardwalk. So last week I ventured back to Goose Creek and saw first-hand the recently opened section (almost one-quarter mile in length).
I must admit that I have been waiting, a bit impatiently at times, for this repair to be completed. I can’t count the times I ventured down to the end of the boardwalk, only to see a mangled mess of twisted boards and warnings, then turned around. Three and one-half years of disrepair and disappointment. It seemed like things would never change. But then, in March/April the repairs were completed, and now my strolls can carry on uninterrupted again.
Following Jesus also can have its share of waiting, disappointment, and even the occasional detours with bouts of disillusionment thrown in. Barbara Brown Taylor notes that such “dis-illusionment” is perhaps, a gift – to have our illusions of God taken from us.
“The disillusioned turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is. Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a minion. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. So who is God? Did God fail to make everything turn out all right? Then perhaps God is not a fixer. So who is God? Over and over, my disappointments draw me deeper into the mystery of God’s being and doing. Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place – no, that is not God, so who is God? It is the question of a lifetime, and the answers are never big enough or finished. Pushing past curtain after curtain, it becomes clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination. God is greater than my imagination, wiser than my wisdom, more dazzling than the universe, as present as the air I breath and utterly beyond my control.”
Eugene Peterson reminds us that following Jesus will mean stopping and starting again, as well as a regular need to turn around (repentance). He writes:
The Way that is Jesus is not only the roads that Jesus walked in Galilee and to Jerusalem but also the way Jesus walked on those roads, the way he acted, felt, talked, gestured, prayed, healed, taught, and died. And the way of his resurrection. The Way that is Jesus cannot be reduced to information or instruction. The Way is a person whom we believe and follow as God-with-us… Too many of my faith-companions for too long have been reducing the way of Jesus simply to the route to heaven, which it certainly is. But there is so much more. Dorothy Day, one of our iconic American pilgrims, a sturdy and discerning traveler on this way, loved to quote St Catherine: “All the way to heaven is heaven, because He had said, “I am the way.”
By God’s grace we can continue to believe and follow The Way that is Jesus. The Way goes before us and invites us to trust Him…
How Sweet The Sound, 
Jon (the Methodist)
If you would like to view past editions of How Sweet the Sound, follow this link: https://sounddistrictnc.org/category/from-the-ds/