Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

A warm and wonderful, daringly and deliriously joyful New Year to you!

Our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures appointed for the office today contains one of my favorite parenthetical asides in scripture. It comes from the book of Isaiah, and is from a portion of the prophecy that’s concerned with what it means to be finally drawn out of exile and returned home. After a series of images which see the nations of the world paying homage to the restored people of Israel, the prophet writes, “thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): I am the LORD, and there is no other.” That second little parenthetical is literally a scriptural gem.

God established the world, the text announces with joy—God didn’t make a mess! In fact, God made the world in such a way that folks could find themselves in the midst of it and say: huh! Look at this! It looks like / feels like home! Home! We’ve found ourselves Home!

There’s a lot packed in here, but the thing about it that I think is most precious is what it takes for granted: that sometimes, life looks pretty chaotic; sometimes we find ourselves in chaotic places; sometimes the terrain of our lives and the landscape around us (be it social, moral, political) can look pretty rocky and not particularly conducive to habitability, to rootedness, to flourishing.

So we need a reminder every now and again: when God formed the world, he drew it serenely and sovereignly and lovingly from formlessness and into form, from chaos and dispersion and exile into harmony and wholeness and rootedness, all for the sake of belonging, of relationship, of home. Chaos is not the secret of the world: love is. Love is openly-spoken Word, love the Principle, love the Secret Fire around which and from which and to which all things spin and move. Love. If things around us (or within us!) seem chaotic, they’re not returning to their original shape but departing from their principle. Which means: they can return to their principle again, they can be drawn back to a place, to a condition, that looks and feels recognizably like home.

Insofar as there is chaos in the world (and there is!), we are not called to reconcile ourselves with it, nor are we called to accommodate ourselves to it…nor, perhaps paradoxically, are we called to re-order it. We are called to proclaim that the world has departed from its Word, its Principle, its Secret Fire…but that God desires to draw it back again—serenely, sovereignly, lovingly—to relationship, to home. And we are called, by grace, to render the chaos in us and in the world around us susceptible and available to the loving mercy of God, to be instruments of the world’s homecoming in and through grace, agents of the new creation of grace, harbingers of the exile’s return by grace. We are called to be conduits of the grace that makes all things new.

Dear Beloved Friend! At the start of this New Year, when so much may seem so uncertain: know for a surety that God is even now drawing all things into harmony according to God’s own will and purpose, and that you are called to be a sign of that gracious restoration and renewal of all things. How might God be drawing you today back to your Rootedness in him? How might God be kindling in you the Secret Fire of his love that you may become a Living Flame, a beacon of grace, of faith, hope and love in the world?

How exciting to be on this journey of faith with you, Dear Friend, in this new year!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+