2-22-17 - Building Booths

Who among us doesn’t want to keep a good thing going, forever if possible? A perfect day, a lovely dinner, the “in-love” phase of a relationship… And we can’t. Days become twilight; meals yield to fullness and digestion; relationships evolve into other phases. Even the most fiery sunset dims, usually just about the time you get your camera out.

But this was a really good thing, up there on that mountain – Jesus, and Moses, and Elijah. You don’t get bigger than that trifecta if you’re a Jew in occupied Israel in what would later be termed the first century. 

“Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’”

So helpful, our Peter. He’ll just whip out the hammer and nails and make three little huts (in earlier translations, it was "booths"), nothing fancy. And who among us doesn’t recognize that impulse? To fix it, capture it, make it last? I keep taking pictures of my cats in adorable poses, even when I know I've taken the same pictures before. Because I want to keep them forever.

Are there things in your life you’re afraid will change or end, that you’d like to fix in place, build a shrine to? Children, friends, homes, work? It’s not a bad thing to love something or someone wonderful. But when we try to keep what we have, we sometimes close off other gifts God has to give us, gifts that might build upon the ones we have, blessings that might even include what we’re trying to keep, but become allowed to grow into fullness. When we don’t try to save the precious things, but use and enjoy them, willing to have them end or run out, we often experience more abundance in our lives. When we enjoy the precious people, willing to see them grow up and even away, we experience a deeper, freer kind of love.

Today in prayer I invite you to bring those people and things to mind, and offer them to God to bless. Offer them with open hands, and a heart willing to grow God-ward. God rarely takes away what we love – and God just might show us something deeper and richer about that beloved than we can see from our current “holding” perspective.

It’s kind of funny, a fisherman offering to build a carpenter a hut. Maybe not as funny as that carpenter setting the bait and reeling those fisherman in, to become the greatest catch of all, a catch that even includes us.