(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Rolling Whiteouts, originally shared on August 27, 2020. It was the forty-fourth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The excessive summer heat and widespread
wildfires in California have resulted in rolling blackouts throughout our area.
Rolling blackouts happen when demand for electrical power exceeds what is
available and segments of a power-supply area are shut down to avoid the whole
area losing power. Different segments are shut-down at a time, until every one
has lost power for a little while.
This last time it was about an hour for each
affected segment in our area, though we never needed to have every segment’s
power shut down. That’s why it’s called a rolling blackout.
But, why is it called a blackout? I’m
guessing that it’s because if your power goes out at night, or in an interior
room with a closed door and no windows, you’re in the dark.
So, is this another way something “black” is
negative and something “white” is positive, like angel’s food cake is white but
devil’s food cake is dark brown? Like a villain is said to have a black heart,
while a hero is a white knight?. The bad guy bears a black hat while the good
guy wears a white one?
Sure, there are exceptions, like Louis
Armstrong singing in “It’s a Wonderful World”, “I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The
bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.”
But, if you are not Black, think of how the
color black is regarded in our language, and about how you would feel if you
regularly heard the association the dominant culture made between the stigma
associated with color black and the name given to your race, no matter how
proud you were and are about that race?
Suppose we called an insufficiency of power
a “whiteout”? Too exceptional in our language to harm our self-esteem, maybe,
but still.
It would actually make more sense, in some
ways.
Remember that stuff you used to paint across
mistakes on your mechanically typed papers? Whiteout. It came in a jar with a
brush, like nail polish, and you pointed it across the mistake, let the
Whiteout dry, and then typed over it to correct your mistake.
Of course, you had to line up the line of
type just right, and if your correction required more space, you had to use
that half-space return to try and squeeze it in. And, if you sniffed it too
long, you got brain damage. But, yes kids, that’s all we had to correct our
typo’s!
Why, in an affluent and technology rich
place like California, do we have more demand for power than we have supply?
Because someone made a mistake. Someone underestimated demand. Someone didn’t
allocate enough money for adequate supplies of power.
We need something to correct that mistake by
first covering it over: a rolling whiteout.
We are at the point in the pandemic where
measurements like numbers of hospitalizations and rates of death are
decreasing. There is talk of opening schools, and our governor will be making
an announcement this week about where we are with church worship services. That
will make people happy, like the guy in the Christian satire site, BabylonBee.com,
that had a headline a couple of weeks ago that said, “Man Who Never Goes to
Church Now Outraged That He Can’t”.
We are also seeing reports about how
difficult it is for many people to be motivated when working at home, find the
energy when they are not just working at home, but present for every crisis,
home schooling or overseeing their children’s education, or wearing down under
prolonged isolation, or whatever.
The fires, the hurricanes, the social
unrest, the social isolation all add up and weigh on us.
It’s no surprise that many people are feeling
overwhelmed from time to time, dried out, empty, that their energy demands
exceed their supply, like something is wrong and needs to be covered and corrected.
A rolling whiteout.
The same is true for our
relationship with God. We can easily get to a point where we feel we need to do
better, we need to be better, we are not the person others think we are, we are
not the people we want to be. We carry burdens of inadequacy, guilt, even shame.
The issues that surround us seem more than we can absorb, much less handle. Our
spiritual energy seems to exceed our demands, and we feel kind of empty inside.
Why? Well, that’s its own explanation.
We feel spiritually drained because of our demands and our personal
expectations. We put the demands on ourselves that do not come from God. We are
spiritually drained because we look to our personal spiritual resources and not
the gifts of spirit that come only from the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing
empowering presence for good in the world.
Listen to what Jesus says. Jesus is speaking to the crowds that were following
him near the beginning of his 3-year public ministry:
*Matthew 11:25-30
We can never do what needs to be done under our own power. The only
things that need to be done are the things God calls us to do, and God gives us
everything we need to do them. For God,
all things are possible.
During the season of Lent, in the Lutheran liturgy, just before the
Gospel is read we used to sing the words of Joel 2:13, “Return to the Lord your
God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love.”
That is how we overcome spiritual dryness. We don’t. We open our hearts
to the streams of living water that is how Jesus described the Holy Spirit, and
God does it.
Look at the Sermon on the Mount. Here
Jesus lays it out for us in the first sentence.
*Matthew 5:3
So, what’s good about being poor in spirit, much less blessed?
Nothing I can think of, in itself. The thing is that those who are poor
in spirit, who have run spiritually dry in their relationship with the living
God, know that there is nothing that they can do for themselves. They have no
place to turn but God, and that is their strength.
Mistakes don’t separate us from God. Let’s call it what it is. Sin. Sin separates
us from God. Repentance is not just saying I’m sorry. It means a change of
heart.
There is only one way to remove that empty spiritual dryness in life,
and it is not for us to get better. It is to recognize that we need a Savior. It
is for us to turn to God and open our hearts to the one true living God. To
allow that streams of living water that is the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing
presence for good in the world, to reshape us, satisfy our thirst, for that is
the only thing that will. To encounter God in Bible study, prayer, worship, and
service.
Are you experiencing a spiritual rolling whiteout: trying to correct
your own mistakes, to make yourself pleasing to God? That’s why you’re
spiritually dry. Your needs vastly exceed your power supply. You can’t correct
yourself, but God has an answer: the cross.
Jesus, fully God and fully human, did everything needed there to reconcile
you to God. It’s a done deal. Your ticket is stamped, “Paid in full.”
Are you weary and carrying heavy burdens? Let Jesus work in you what is
pleasing to God. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light.
Open your heart and receive the gift of God’s presence, or to allow God to renew you, today.
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