SPACE FOR SURPRISES

SPACE FOR SURPRISES

My grandmother was very exact about how many people were invited to Christmas dinner. The table itself dictated their number. Raised with such attitudes it was a shock to me to hear a parish priest in Detroit, many years later, say he was inviting all the parish helpers for Christmas. I knew they were many – and later discovered it was 96 in all – and where was he going to put them? He had no answer. He simply invited them. In the event, of course, it all worked out; they sat on the stairs, in bedrooms, corridors - anywhere they could find a space.

That was a long time ago but I continue to be shocked when people plan impossible things and just expect they will all work out! The annoying thing is they usually do! Like Jonah, I sometimes wish they would go wrong just to see what would happen. But they don’t.

When Elijah asked the widow of drought stricken Sidon to prepare some food for him, before she cooked her last meal for herself and her son, he seemed to be asking something quite selfish and unjust. But she did not protest and did it anyway. We know the outcome: her resources were replenished continually (1 Kings 17).

It did not make sense and was quite “irrational.” But, of course, in another order of understanding, it made lots of sense. What Elijah and the parish priest were doing was “stretching” our way of thinking and living and relating. Instead of planning everything to the last detail they left a space to be filled in another way. (I remember it once being explained to me that in Chinese painting they leave blanks of pure white space. They feel no urge to complete the picture).

Perhaps we can say it is good to leave spaces in our arrangements and relationships. We don’t have to think of everything and plan down to the last detail. We can leave room for surprises – especially the God of Surprises, the one who comes in to fill the spaces. I have already written in this column of the migrants entering Europe. Governments there cannot plan the whole thing. I am not sure if they look at it like this but we can plan what we can, and then leave room for surprises.   

With the migrants it is a mega-question. But there are lots of little moments when we are called to stretch a bit. There is always room around the table.  

8 November 2015                               Sunday 32 B

1 Kings 17:10-16                                Hebrews 9:24-28                                Mark 12:38-44