forest hill 
February 2, 2025
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
“Finding Focus”
I write this as our country teeters towards an economic cliff potentially more devastating than anything we have seen in our lifetimes. If the predictions we’re hearing aren’t exaggerated beyond belief, it’s reasonable to plan for the possibility that our lives could be completely upended in the next few months, and that no one will be left untouched. Where is God in this mess?
It’s so tempting to get caught up in grievance politics: look for someone to blame, demand revenge, and relish the thought of inflicting harm back. We want to teach a lesson, assert our rights, demonstrate strength. It’s particularly galling to see our politicians turning themselves inside out to do the bidding of a foreign power in the vain hope that it might head the disaster off at the pass, because it makes you realize how little actual independence we truly have. So much of what we have come to depend on seems to be reliant on the whims of others who are completely out of our control.
One common way to try to rescue some shreds of self-respect is to whine and complain that this is all the fault of someone else. But I have my doubts about whether this really leads to a long term sense of relief. At the end of the day, a blaming exercise like that still leaves us all powerless and frustrated.
But I’m increasingly coming to believe that a good life isn’t grounded in the wealth or luxuries we have. We aren’t necessarily happier when we have the chance to drink Florida orange juice, or vacation in Texas, or own a more expensive smart watch. I’ve lived among lots of extremely happy people who had none of those things. What seems to make for a good life is a sense of agency, control, options and choices. When people review their lives and remember the highlights to me, they seem to take most pride in the times when they triumphed over adversity. Those are the stories we celebrate. Those are the memories we share at funerals. Those are the character traits we want to pass on to our children.
Maybe instead of complaining about the things we cannot change, we need to focus more and more on practical, tangible ways to express the agency we really do still have: encourage options, be communities where initiative is valued, and think outside the box for new ways to address the adversity around us. Maybe living love means helping people feel like they don’t have to be pawns in an evil system; rather they are valued participants in a community that makes life better.We’re reading St. Paul’s hymn to love this week. Is that a way forward?
Can we, as a community, face adversity with patience and kindness, and refuse to be envious, or boastful or arrogant or rude? Can we, as a community, be witness to the reality that people truly can learn how to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things? Can we take Paul’s luminous poem about love, which so often we only read at weddings, and use it as the focus for all that we do and become a people who do not insist on our own way; are not irritable; keep no record of wrongs, do not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoice in the truth?
And can we love each other, and those around us, into a good life, especially when adversity hits hardest? However hard adversity hits, it need not prevent us from loving.For love never ends. As for tariffs, they will pass away. As for politicians, they will cease. As for pundits and economists and bullies, they will come to an end. And when the present adversities are over, and new challenges arise, faith hope and love remain. And the greatest of these is love.
We worship online and in person, Sunday at 11am ET