Transformed

Today’s guest blogger is Shannon Skelly.  Shannon is a member of Spirit of Life Presbyterian, a Campus Minister at College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, a Jr. at St. John’s majoring in Theology and Peace Studies, and a beloved child of God.  Shannon will provide a monthly entry on the 17th of each month.  Thanks for your beautiful reflection.

Today’s Readings: Gen 35:1-36:43, Matt 12:1-21, Psalm 15:1-5, Prov 3:21-26

Proverbs spoke to me profoundly in today’s reading, even with such few words! Proverbs 3:25-26 says: Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.

It prompted me to consider my fears and worries. I’m the kind of person that naturally considers all of the things that may be going wrong if I don’t get a text/call from a loved one when I expected it— were they in a car accident? Did something horrific happen? And my heart races with anxiety and concern over circumstances I cannot control. Even on beautiful, inspiring days filled with celebration of love and community I can catch myself wondering when the other shoe will drop.

For some reason I find myself having  something to worry about at all times, and in today’s world with fearful, suspicious, and apocalyptic headlines every day, I don’t think I’m alone. It’s so easy to forget that our God is bigger than any disaster or tragedy we can imagine; chaos could overtake the world and it wouldn’t overtake God. Don’t we have proof of this all throughout history? After every tragedy, natural disaster, war, or innocent life lost, goodness returns. We’re so blessed that in the midst of life’s horrors, God’s comforting embrace is most tangible, and He recycles the broken and warped situation to produce new life and healing.
Barbara Brown Taylor, an episcopal priest, wrote about the Resurrection: “The stink of death is contradicted by the fresh smell of a new morning, as Jesus’ friends stumble upon a kind of life they have not known before— so boundless, so wholly unexpected— that it permanently rearranges their previous understanding of reality. In the presence of the risen Christ, they understand that there is no wreckage so total that God cannot redeem it. There is no cause so lost that God cannot breathe life into it.”

It’s time that we let our lives be transformed as the disciples’ lives were by the inconceivable truth that “there is no cause so lost that God cannot breathe life into it,” no heart so tormented that it cannot be healed, no past so afflicted that the future is without love.

Shannon Skelly
Theology & Peace Studies ’16
CSB Campus Minister: Spirituality & Social Justice