Act, Love, Walk

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:8 One of my New Year's resolutions was to find a church to belong to. Lately, I've been trying to decide between the United Methodist Church and Trinity Grace Church, both in Park Slope (I know). Now, I love UMCPS for a couple of reasons: 1. They explicitly “affirm” gay and lesbian people, and while it makes me sad and frustrated that they have to do so, it seems like they do: my whole church search started when I left Redeemer, the church where “all the hip white kids go”, after learning that their tenets include a statement that marriage should be between a man and a woman. 2. UMC is diverse in terms of the age and backgrounds and ability status of their congregants – especially for a church, and especially for a church in Park Slope. But the sermon at Trinity last week blew me away. Not only because of my instant crush on the speaker, and not only because it was about prayer, at which I had spent all week failing, but because she a. vehemently and voice-raisingly located the Lord's Prayer within a life devoted to "advancing the Kingdom," and b. took for granted that doing justice is integral to that kingdom. So I managed to pray for more than ninety seconds this morning, and one main thrust of my prayer was this: I don't understand all these verses in the Bible that promise that God will take care of His people, when so many lives in this world end in devastating, unnecessary ways. My life seems to always work out well -- eating disorder healed, baby healthy. But other people's don't, and I can't see God "rewarding" one person and not another, especially when the one being rewarded is me. Much of the time, I'm a faithless mess – but my son's alive, while other mothers are losing their babies as I type. And it occurred to me then – and I believe this was God; it was a pretty God thing to say -- well, you have this money in your savings account and it's not doing any dying babies any good there, so I'm not sure what you want Me to tell you. So, three things I'm really good at: complaining because my husband likes nice things and I don't like to spend money, bemoaning the fact that I can do so little to help people who are dying of horrible and easily preventable conditions, and justifying why I can't afford things. One thing I'm trying to get better at: doing what I'm told, what I can do, instead of complaining about the insurmountable nature of whatever I'm facing. It's one thing, a more comfortable thing, to rely on faith when I need something to do something and I can't, to take comfort in God and ask Him for stuff I need and can't get for myself. But to radically alter how I am living my life and what matters to me in order to align my will with His, to give things up because of God -- well, that's a little excessive, isn't it? Surely God doesn't want me to jeopardize my own well-being just to try and make things more fair, more like the kingdom He envisions. Except He probably does, especially given how expansive my definition of well-being has become. And ultimately, I think the kind of faith you have when you have no other option doesn't mean a whole lot: I've spent the past few weeks all, well, it's okay if I believe in God and ultimately He turns out not to exist, because I wouldn't have lost anything; it's not like I'm giving anything up to believe in Him. I'd suggest, though, that I should do things differently because I am trying to live in connection to Him, am trying to follow His will. I should be giving things up and doing things that feel hard and unnatural. I should be giving things up in order to act out my faith – even if the things I give up ultimately turn out not to be worth very much. I tell myself that I want to help others but don't know where to start, but I think the real problem is that I don't like the way I have to start: by taking my cues from a God that I know most people around me think of as some sky-fairy, not a real thing; by entertaining the possibility that actually acting out what I believe will make me look crazy or foolish. I don't like to feel stupid, and I'm afraid of being alienated, not just from this "most people," but from specific people I love very much. Like my husband. Like my parents. No one – at least, none of the witty, sophisticated people in my life – likes to hear you're doing something because God told you to. But underneath all my reservations and desire to maintain my image of myself, that is what I want: to be doing what God wants me to do. To feel that closeness, to feel part of something that I know has meaning, that will last beyond this month or year or lifetime. To act justly, to do justice, in a world in which justice requires a radical departure from the way the world works, when, to be honest, the world as it is is quite comfortable for me.