A dead end can be a negative or a positive, depending on your viewpoint. But it can mean real trouble when you come upon one unexpectedly.
Call it what you will—caving, spelunking, crazy—exploring under the earth is a pastime that just draws some people. My friend and I were two of those people. We started out walking. Then we had to crouch a bit. Soon enough, we were crawling on all fours. All of this to find the rumored “crystal cave.”
And always on a slight decline.
In time, the tunnel dimensions grew pretty tight. We lost the ability to turn over on our backs; just too narrow. There was only enough ceiling height for us and our gear.
We eventually found ourselves at a juncture. Left? Right? Like many of life’s choices, the two tunnels before us bore no sign to indicate the best way. For no particular reason, we chose the left tunnel. We expected more decline, so we got pretty excited when the tunnel turned even more downward—until we came to the wall.
Dead end.
So there we were, one in front of the other, heads down, feet up. At this point, the tunnel was too tight for us to turn around. We hadn't found the crystal cave. We couldn't go forward. We were out of options.
We just wanted to give up.
Are you feeling that? The claustrophobia? That sense of failure? No room to maneuver? Nowhere to turn? Stuck between a rock and a hard place?
The Hebrew word for this kind of situation is tzoros. It's the word for trouble. But not just any run-of-the-mill trouble. It means dire straits, nowhere to turn, between a rock and a hard place, no room to maneuver, out of options, no margin.
That's the word in this week's scripture from Psalm 91 where God says, "Those who love me…I will be with them in trouble [tzoros],"
More often than not, we just don’t see tzoros coming. Whether we expect it or are caught off guard, what a difference it makes to not be alone! My friend and I were able to discuss our situation, cheer each other up, and crawl backward to that earlier junction. It took a little longer, but our wrong turn helped us know which was the right turn. And taking that other tunnel led us to the crystal cave (which, by the way, was breathtakingly beautiful and well worth all the trouble).
In Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes, "This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us…and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds." That is God's response to no margin, to dire straits, to "out of options," to trouble so bad it needs a special word to describe it.
God knows when we are in tzoros and will be with us in it. God goes down into it with us. God meets us at the dead end...even if we are revisiting that dead end. No matter how much tzoros we’re in, God's expansive (and expanding) love truly can conquer all.
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PHOTO: a giant concrete arrow seen from the air
Link to Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: https://smile.amazon.com/Traveling-Mercies-Some-Thoughts-Faith/dp/0385496095/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HS72A167N5OE&keywords=traveling+mercies+by+anne+lamott&qid=1569534211&sprefix=Traveling+m%2Caps%2C316&sr=8-1
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Join us Friday morning for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We meet at 8:00 on Zoom** and in person at Our Breakfast Place restaurant for an interesting hour of food, scripture, and fellowship.
Blessings,
Steve
**Contact me for the Zoom link
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=281
Print them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/pdf//Cx_Proper21.pdf
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Psalm 146
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31
Proper 21 (26) (September 25, 2022)
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