Fear Itself
Excerpt from Hosea 8:1-7
"Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have broken my covenant, and transgressed my law."
Reflection by Donna Schaper
We are reaching the end of our delusions. Technology can't fix everything, especially big spills in the Gulf. There may not be enough money for some people to have way too much and others to have way too little. Terrorism doesn't stop just because we torture terrorists. As someone wise joked, terrorists used to use terror tactics and media campaigns, now they just use media campaigns to keep us terrified. Terrorists win by keeping people afraid.
BIg ideas die hard. It hurts to lose your faith in technology. It hurts to imagine a nation so desperate that it would use torture. It hurts to be afraid, day in and day out, about the return of your job or the return of the anger and meanness of the terrorists.
When the prophet Hosea tells us to set a trumpet to our lips, he is begging us to rejoice in the end of our delusions. When covenants get broken, bad things happen. When covenants are kept, good things happen. We can stop the limbo of delusion-filled living. There are alternatives. Sound a trumpet and live by the covenant, not the crass. Live by the truth, not delusions. Send the vulture away.
Prayer
For joy at the end of one kind of life on behalf of a new one, we give you thanks, Covenanting God. Our hand reaches back to yours. Amen.
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