BeHeadlines

February 9, 2015

BeHeadlines 

Here is the headline in yesterday’s paper: US charges 6 immigrants with helping Islamic State.  These are Ramiz Zijad Hodzic, his wife Sedina Unkic Hosdic, and Armin Harcevic, of St. Louis County; also Nihad Rosic of Utica, NY, Mediha Medy Salkicevic of Schiller Park IL, and Jasminka Ramic of Rockford, IL, all immigrants from Bosnia, “point people for funneling, money, guns and military equipment to Islamic State fighters in the Middle East.”

Welcome to my world.

          My first reaction, in jest, is to flesh out the summary below the head: “Suspects accused of sending cash, arms to extremists.” Adding – Trial tomorrow. The women to be burned on the courthouse steps in the evening, the men beheaded under the arch the next morning.

In jest? – Then the jest isn’t very funny; it isn’t funny at all. And it was probably only partly in jest in any case.  For truth be told, I am as mean, both in the sense of “nasty” and “low or narrow” as the next guy, who is as mean as I am.

          I read the article over breakfast and described my additions to Roz, who shook her head sadly and suggested we go to church. She was also jesting, in part – as if church would do me any good; but we went.

The lessons where I went: Psalm 147 and Isaiah 40. A psalm to the God that is gracious, who “gathers the outcasts,” who “lifts up the downtrodden,” who “heals the broken-hearted,” the same God that counts and names the stars, whose “understanding is beyond measure”:

¹⁰ His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
   nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;
¹¹ but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
   in those who hope in his steadfast love. 

He is not “with” power and strength but with hope and love. Isaiah adds that this God “who sits above the circle of the earth,” who made the heavens, everlasting, creator “of the ends of the earth” – this God brings princes, who are like grasshoppers, “to naught”; he “makes the rulers of the earth as nothing” – those in power are like plants that have no root:

²⁴ . . . when he blows upon them, and they wither,
   and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 

It is not the powerful that God is concerned about: the young (and strong - soldiers!) “will faint and be weary . . . fall exhausted,” while those that wait and trust

³¹ . . . shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint.

“Yes!” I’m ready to shout out from the back pew and rouse all those sleeping with their hearing-aids still on.

          I’m about to score a point in a long-running argument I have with Gaspar Stephens, who wants to believe that we don’t need a God to believe in. My contention is that if we didn’t have a transcendent God, something/someone that is outside our universe, that judges us – I’m not thinking of a last judgment but an ongoing standard - if we didn't have such a God, we’d have to invent one. Except we can’t invent one and he/she/it still be transcendent.

          Moreover, we wouldn’t invent the one we (meaning “my ilk and I”) are lucky to have, a god not of might but of lovingkindness. Not the god of the psalmist (in 137) that will bash the Babylonian babies heads against the rocks, not the god of Nahum that will “rage against his enemies” (who are, conveniently, the same as Nahum’s), not the god of John of Patmos, who writes his (John’s and John's god's) enemies out of the Lamb’s book of life, nor of Jude, who will make them an example by burning them in eternal fire. Not any god that burns or beheads or shouts for blood. Rather the god of gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

          The young men shouting for blood are running and running and growing wearier and wearier, but those that trust in him, let’s just say it – in Jesus – are growing stronger in kindness and gentleness and . . . how else do we get there?

Gaspar knows, I’m sure.  But I don’t; I’m too mean.

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There are wits with no sense of humor.  - Uncle Albert

Over on our political side, “Go Around Back,” my Uncle Albert tells why he won’t vote for Hillary.