Genesis 12:1-4a
Ephesians 3:14-19
John 15:9-171
Our scripture from Genesis is often used to inspire people to set out toward the unknown, leaving everything behind as we follow God’s lead into a totally new life. However, the very end of the story this morning does not fit that ideal situation. It says very specifically: ” Lot went with him.” If one reads further, one learns that Abram also took his wife Sarai and all of their combined possessions. Abram faithfully followed God in to the unknown, but he did not leave everything behind. We take our past with us always, wherever we go. We can choose to let it be a hindrance on our journey, or we can choose to let God transform it into a help for our journey. Just as we can give God our past, we can give God our future, as Abram did when he left his home and went where God directed. We can choose to worry about our future, or we can choose to rest in the fact that God will use it for our good no matter what it might bring us. Living in the knowledge that our past and future are in God’s hands and trusting God with our lives allows us to live joyfully in the present, as we are ” being rooted and grounded in love ” and as we are ” filled with the fullness of God”, as our second scripture reading from the Letter to the Ephesians puts it. It allows us to ” abide in God’s love ” and lets our ” joy be complete ” as Jesus tells his disciples in our gospel this morning. It frees us from a lot of worry and stress so that we have the time and energy to ” love one another “, and it gives us the stability we need to ” bear fruit that will last ” as Jesus says.
The call to give God our past, present, and future comes only from God, but it is not given only to famous saints or biblical figures. God want every one to freely give their lives to him so that those lives can be real. Life comes only from God – it is not under our power – and until we recognize that, our lives aren’t real; at best they are pale imitations of true life, at worst they are walking deaths. We can choose to pretend that our lives are under our own control and in so doing lose them, or we can choose to acknowledge and rest in God as the source of our lives and so live more truly than we could ever have imagined. Abiding in God won’t necessarily make life easy we can see that by looking the human life of God in Jesus but it will be fruitful, based on love, and eternal. There’s no denying that some events in our past can be crippling and we ought not to make light of them. In the same manner, sometimes events looming in the future can be overwhelming. We shouldn’t deny all that; it is right and good to grieve over those things, but we don’t have to let that paralyze us. God can transform it into good grief that helps us to learn from our past and prepare for the future, while not letting them consume our lives. Our past, present, and future are all parts of us that God can use to bring us to true life. We must not deny them, fret over them, or pretend that we are in charge of them. They are from God and God will give us what we need if we only take it from him and abide in him as the source, meaning, and completion of our lives.
That is true not only for us as individuals, but also for us as a monastery. There is good and bad in our past. We don’t know what the future will bring, but most likely there will be good and bad in it, too. The only thing we can be sure of is that no matter what has happened and what may happen, God can make good out of it for us, if we only allow it. It may not turn out the way we expect or want, and we should be thankful for that, because our hopes and desires are so tiny. God will make things better than we could ever expect or desire. May we look with love on our past as we take it with us into the future, knowing the one sure thing is that God is with us. AMEN