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How present to our surroundings are we really? I sit in the waiting area while I get the oil changed in my car. Popular music from the ’90s plays in the background as customers wait in top-grain leatherette modern sofas and chairs around a white-and-stainless table. The 90" TV is off. I am at peace until the soda machine drops a drink. It startles me every time. Why? I know it is there, but what is obvious still startles me.
Is this a lesson to us in our spiritual lives? Have we become so numb to the world’s violence and injustices that when they happen, we are no longer emotionally, physically or spiritually moved? How can we be this way as people of God?
What obvious things shake us this season? Does the ongoing conflict in the Middle East shake us? Does uncontrolled gun violence shake us? Does drug abuse shake us and, more specifically, the reasons behind it? Do hunger and poverty shake us? Do racism and the violence it creates shake us? Do rotten politics shake us? All these things are obvious to us, but have we ceased to be shaken?
In this season, we are called to be shaken in the name of Jesus Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. No one who followed him really expected him to die. He was the Messiah. If the looming threat of persecution actually came to pass, they assumed he’d rescue himself. Still less did they expect him, having died, to rise from the dead on the third day, despite all his teaching and preaching about what was to come.
We can be startled, shaken and even stirred — but we must live into the expectant hope of the resurrection in everything we do, say and we are. This hope is the way of a believer. We must be willing to be startled and yet find peace in the love we have through our Savior’s sacrifice.
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