when you feel powerless

 

Does the world feel like it is spinning out of control? Sometimes it seems like no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, life just doesn’t work out the way you want it to work out. Sometimes it feels like we are merely subject to greater forces at work…manipulating outcomes…and there is very little we can do about it. Your voice feels small, drowned out by louder, stronger voices—voices who always seem to get a hearing, voices that have a say in shaping the world.

When you are feeling helpless, I believe there is One who hears, who loves, who sees. I believe the One who loves is partial to the poor in spirit. The powers of this world may strut and stretch the limits, but God stands with the powerless, sides with the oppressed. The downtrodden will be vindicated in the end.

I believe that hope makes present this future. I believe that the One who hears, who loves, who sees is present to us as the poor in spirit are present to one another through the mercy of solidarity. This is God-with-skin, God glimpsed in the face-to-face, the being-with.

There is a community of Beloved (if battered) souls that is hidden from those who only have eyes to envision the expansion of their own power. The community of the Beloved bears fruit by going underground…like a seed, so small, so seemingly insignificant. The Beloved feel like they are dying inside, fallen, scattered and forgotten.

But the kingdom of heaven is small like that, Jesus said. Its dominion is quiet, it grows quietly, gently, so meek. Its life perseveres, breaks through, bears fruit, defies logic. Its weakness turns out to be its strength for the powerful would never expect so fragile a life to endure, to break out and flourish under such hostile conditions.

I believe there is a place of grace through and through that is hidden from the thrones and board rooms of this world. It is a place that is so expansive we cannot possibly expand upon it further; we can only receive it and enter it, like a seed in soil or like a helpless child. This place is hidden from the powerful because the powerful think they can make it by their own power. But it cannot be made by us. It is. We can only receive it gratefully, gladly live in its reality, be present to it just by faith, give assent to the grace of it and cooperate with it.

This is why I believe it is futile to put our faith in political outcomes. The life of God transcends such power through its subversive nature. It is a hidden work the powers of this world cannot touch, would never expect. The powerful are too self-absorbed to account for it. Life springs up in a kind of quiet defiance. No power can snuff out its work. It will keep springing up. Let us be present to it and let us not fear. Love mercy, do justly, walk humbly.

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 when you feel powerless

reflections by troy cady

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*Photo by Emmanuel Mbala via Unsplash. Creative Commons License.