Our Faithful Best Guess

         I’ve been struck this last week by the enormities of what so many of us are dealing with, either directly or, more often, in the faces of our friends, family, and neighbors.
Sickness and declining health,
depression,
accidents,
desperate financial straits,
being stuck in bureaucracies that crinkle the soul,
and on and on. 

         I wonder, what can we do? The only answer I can come up with is:
Our faithful best guess.

Prayer

Our faithful best guess.

         It would be easy to give up in the face of all these things.

 In fact, I think there is a story being told by the World that claims:

         For anything to really change, for anything to really matter, it has to be done by big and important people and institutions with grand designs and buckets of influence and a slick logo. 

         That, however, is not the Christian story
—a babe in a manger,
a woman returning from a tomb with some news,
a dozen or so people huddled together in an upper room,
they each transform the world for the good… 

         That’s our story, and it is a true one.
We each, and even more we together, have a grand power. We also, as Christians, have a calling. We’ve been adopted into God’s family at our baptism, and so we follow in Jesus’ footsteps in order to become more like him, more like the one who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…

         More like him,
-loving and joyous in the face of sorrow and hate,
-peaceful and patient as war and haste rule the day,
-kind and good and faithful and gentle and self-controlled, while their opposites pile up in so many ways. 

         This is no small thing, to be a small Christ to our neighbors.
         No small thing, for entropy is the rule… what do I mean by Entropy? Simply this, left to their own devices, things fall apart; if no one expends the energy to maintain and care, there will be neither maintenance nor care.
         No small thing, for those to whom we extend tender care and kind interest are fellow human beings,
not some nebulous other;
they are marked with the image of God.

         It is for that reason we ought to be profligate,
wasteful and reckless,
with our generosity.
         Yes, our generosity will be abused at times, but in the face of a world poorly abused, people so often cast aside like trash,
so be it—better ten fake beggars receive bread than a truly needy one starve or be forced into sin,
better to lend a listening ear to an ungrateful gabber than withdraw that ear and the desperate go unheard and despair. 

Yes, there is risk in the Christian life
—we’ll make mistakes,
we’ll embarrass ourselves in failed attempts at faithfulness, but keep on, continue the race dear siblings in the Spirit.
         Keep on, because it is all a best guess! We walk a path with only modest lighting, but that’s okay
—we know the path ends where it began, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

         And if it is a best guess, destined for occasional failure and misunderstanding,
then we ought to follow Luther’s understanding of the 8^th commandment by giving everyone’s words and actions the benefit of the doubt. 

Hope that everyone is doing the best they can…
Not everyone is, I will openly admit that,
but act as if they are for, who knows, maybe by your example, you will convert them to kindness.

…      This best guess of ours, and believing that other people are doing the same,
it is so freeing!

—do the best you can, and then let it be.
You did what you could, you acted as faithfully as you could with the information you had at hand, don’t lose sleep over the rest. 

         Remember the promise of Sabbath! The world is capable of turning without you for a day, there are other faithful folk doing their faithful best as you rest.

         Our faithful best guess! For through Christ and in the Spirit, God has:
-forgiven us and freed us from overwork, faultfinding and anxiety,
-been generous with us so that we too may be generous beyond expectation,
-empowered us to be Spirit People in the face of Fleshy indifference and decay,
-and made us Children of God and followers of Christ, so that we might find power in weakness.

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