How troubling events can teach about ourselves, God and the possibilities for love

In Luke 17, at the beginning of a teaching about future events, Jesus answered the Pharisees’ question about when the kingdom of God would come. He said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is or there it is.’ For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” A footnote adds “or within you.”

“Realm” is another word for kingdom. To me, it’s broader, more open, more mysterious, just as Jesus described the kingdom of God to be. The Sufi legend about the fish looking for the sea illustrates a realm of the Spirit that we inhabit often without recognizing it.

Annie Dillard wrote about fish in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Fish are hard to see … the very act of trying to see fish makes them almost impossible to see. They manage to be so water colored.”

But we’re not talking about tropical fish, exotic reds and purples swimming in the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean. We’re talking about your everyday bluegills or carp, fish like you and me, swimming around in ordinary waters. We are people in the realm of God who dart about anxiously, looking for God when God is the element in which we live. God flows all around us and even in and through us, just as fish breathe the water that keeps them alive.
Remember Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him and drank in the loving nurture of his presence? Remember Martha rattling around the kitchen in a stew because she had to get the dinner ready and her spiritually-minded sister wouldn’t help?

I identify with both. I love to sit at Jesus’ feet like Mary, but when I’m working at preparing dinner for company, I get stressed. People are hungry and want to eat. It’s a lot of work, and I never know if it will be enough or if everything will turn out right.

I would have been upset to be reprimanded by Jesus for being worried and distracted. I’d have been even more upset to be told that my sister was doing the right thing. This story ends without us learning how Martha responded to Jesus. Did she accept what he was saying to her? Did she change?

Jesus’ words to Martha were a confrontation, but they were also an invitation. Jesus knew and loved Martha, just as he loved Mary. His desire for Martha was filled with compassion. He knew that what she so deeply needed was to be with him as friend and teacher and Savior. He was there to show her the way of God, a way of peace and joy and love.

This experience for Martha was potentially a moment of conversion. As Carolyn Gratton points out in The Art of Spiritual Guidance, it was an opportunity for a complete reordering of the old Martha, who lived anxiously and angrily, an opportunity to begin the metamorphosis of a life transformed. Such opportunities may come as a shift, a crack, a ray. They come from inside or outside. They are so real that they make us catch our breath or stagger or even fall on our faces. Something old has to die because something new is struggling to be born.

It’s both disquieting and hopeful to know that any event of our lives can be the beginning of change. It can be as large as the death of a loved one or as small as a word someone casually says to us. All life offers us life if we can but breathe in the water of the realm of God. Letting go of demands to have things our way—to control, manipulate and force things—frees us to swim freely in this boundless sea.

I think Martha didn’t drop her dinner preparations and go sit with Mary at Jesus’ feet. I doubt that the words of Jesus had much immediate effect on her type of personality. I’d like to believe, though, that his words stuck somewhere in her mind and eventually surfaced enough for her to pay attention. Maybe one day she thought, I believe I could stop working and sit down and be still and pray and meditate on what Jesus has been telling me. Maybe at small points along the way of her life in the next weeks she shifted in her behavior and chose along with Mary the position of sitting at Jesus’ feet.

The Apostle Paul had a dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, but most of us have small conversions as we travel our roads. Conversion happens when we pay attention. Small opportunities can slide right by us if we aren’t paying attention. We are often too distracted, too oblivious, too numb to notice when the voice of God speaks. What we lose then is the invitation and the opportunity to experience the reign of God fully and freely in our lives and in our world all around us.

I have a little ritual I use when I am stopped short by some experience that is trying to get my attention. It could be called a Martha moment. The experience may be, like Martha’s, that I am suddenly made aware that I am terribly upset. It’s not a passing annoyance. It’s genuine anger. I will first say to myself, “This is a sin. Stop it.” Then I may remember what I’ve been taught: “Anything that happens is material for spiritual growth.” This is an invitation and an opportunity for deepening my spiritual life.

So I have three questions to struggle with in any troubling event:
What can I learn about myself?
What can I learn about God?
What are the possibilities for love (in other words, what is God’s will)?

These aren’t easy questions with easy answers. I have to face myself and my sinful tendencies. I have to be willing to know myself with all the murkiness that hides in my shadows. I have to take time to look and listen to God through the various ways God speaks. For me, that usually means silence, prayer, Scripture, meditation. The hardest question of all is: What are the possibilities for love, which is the bottom line when we ask what God’s will is.

Suppose Martha asked and found answers to these questions. What could she learn about herself? We might be able to help her: controlling, putting higher value on doing than being, maybe trying to make a good impression.

Second question: What could Martha learn about God? She should be so fortunate, having Jesus right there to tell her. A relationship with God is better than an impressive dinner. God loves her so much that the Messiah will interrupt his teaching to listen and respond to her and try to open her eyes to the truth. God knows Martha has a gift that can be made whole and used for the world and for her happiness rather than for her frustration.

Third question: What are the possibilities for love? They are as endless as her imagination and God’s own Spirit. That love is so profound and far-reaching that it is breathtaking. It is a love that changes everything.

Life brings us all shakeups, disappointments, crises. Maybe what we have built our lives on suddenly starts crumbling. Maybe we suddenly don’t know why we are spending our lives doing what we’re doing. Maybe some painful event shakes us to the core. One such painful event happened to me last summer.

My husband, Harold, and I had a dog for eight years, a cairn terrier we loved very much, a dog we called perfect because she was so gentle and friendly and good. Our gentle dog was attacked and killed on the road by a neighbor’s dog as I walked with her on a leash past his house one peaceful July evening. The terrible memory of that violence, the feelings of pain, fear and anger are still with me, though they have softened a lot. I struggled with my three questions and I have learned some things about myself and God as I swim in the sea of God’s presence. But I am still confronted with the hard possibilities of love.

Jesus, in the form of my husband, said one day. “I think when we get our new dog, we could invite the neighbors whose dog killed ours and some of the other neighbors who have been emotionally and physically involved in what happened to come to our house and celebrate with us.”

The very idea shook me. In order to do this I had to breathe the waters of the realm of God. This sea of abundant life flows though our lungs, holds us suspended in the eternal and provides the freshness of grace as we swim in the tender mercies of God.

Barbara Esch Shisler is a member of Perkasie (Pa.) Mennonite Church.