On our rainy Saturday morning, we gathered in the cozy and restful Parish Library and explored scripture together. One of the gifts of our time together is that we never do know where the conversation will go as we sit with and engage the scriptures. This time we looked at the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) for the month of October.
This time we focused on the harvest imagery which is threaded through the various scripture passages from Lamentations, Jeremiah, and Joel. What was fascinating was how our conversation shifted to the period of dormancy, when God appears to be silent, but just as plants are actually in motion inside while appearing to be at rest or even dead from the outside, we discerned that God offers us silence (not an absence of God, but a quiet time with God) so that we can process what God has already revealed to us. Sometime the timing’s not right yet for us to move forward, sometimes our gifts haven’t come enough to fruition to be ready for use for the kingdom. The truth revealed to us in community and through conversation was that when God comes knocking at our door, our response can be simple (yes or no) but the impact on our life is profound and complex.
