Alex Swain

Dear friend,

The theme of comfort and rest in the reality, goodness, and wonder of God, in spite of daily toils and troubles, stand out most prominently as I reflect on today’s readings. “Happy are they all who take refuge in him!” (Psalm 2:13)

In Job we are given a glimpse of the qualitative experience, the “what it is like,” to rest knowing that despite hardship God is present. “For he wounds, but he binds up; he strikes, but his hands heal. He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword.”

In the Acts of the Apostles we see that, despite the fear of the earliest followers of Christ from persecution and death, they yet lived “in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.” In so doing the Church increased greatly in number.

In the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus assures us that it is in his very flesh and blood that we may truly live most fully and for all eternity. "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”

[A tangent: This text, in particular, makes me miss receiving Holy Eucharist as a community. Yet, there is immense solace in recalling our Baptismal covenant that in our Baptism we are grafted and reformed into one body, the body of Christ, and daily have the opportunity to feast on and with our Lord, as community with all the Saints, through our own actions and prayerful hearts.]

These are certainly bold and beautiful reassurances given the increasingly frayed and tragic times we live in. Fraught as human history is and will continue to be, the last sentence of the passage from Job also brings a modicum of comfort. “See we have searched this out; it is true. Hear, and know it for yourself.” I am reminded that we are not in this alone nor for the first time. Given my limited knowledge of history, it can feel as though all of this–plague, war, economic desolation, the horrors of oppression we afflict on one another--is novel and a new tragedy for humanity to be bearing. I may find myself asking, at times, “Oh God, where in this are you?” I then recall that the difficulties of today have been, and will continue to be, dealt with by brothers and sisters and siblings through all time. From the earliest persecutions of Christians, through plague, war, famine, and natural disaster, humans persist and find God’s grace and goodness through it all. “See we have searched this out; it is true. Hear, and know it for yourself.”

As a community, we can–and do–come together by God’s grace to offer of ourselves love to one another. In so doing, our actions today resound eternally. I have no doubt about this, for as Jesus states assuredly, “But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” If we are to live forever, eternity begins now – and has begun – and I take great comfort in that. Let us, therefore, take refuge in God. Amen.

In Christ,
Alex Swain