Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10 Hebrews 12:1-4 Luke 12:49-53
They were legally blocked from using a rabbit. They considered a cow and a horse, even a frog. But Walt Disney and his colleagues went with a mouse named Mortimer, though the name can be tweaked before his 1928 debut in “Steamboat Willie,” the primary cartoon with synchronized video and sound. So it was Mickey Mouse who first spoke to us as if he were a human being.
But when the query is what animal will we humans most bear a resemblance to, the selection is evident. Not an eagle, a bear or perhaps a chimp. We’re clams.
We’re clams because we cannot help but live in our enclosed worlds. We dwell inside our protective shells, protected from what might harm us but actually not fully open to what lies beyond. Indeed, we’re challenged even to imagine stories of a land above the waters that we all know.
Inside those shells, the worlds wherein we live, are those whom we love, and nothing is more painful to us than experiencing a division with one among our family members. Outright conflict might even be easier. We move well enough from like to hatred. No, the good sorrow is loving someone who doesn’t love what we love, who doesn’t share our values.
Some examples. Someone we love begins to like someone we could never love. We’re sure that our own loved one might be hurt, and that fear causes us great pain. Or consider the parent who deeply loves the religion and who cannot consider the kid not practicing the identical. What of the kid, who rejects the very shell from which it emerged? To be an adult means staying removed from parents, protected inside its latest shell.
The center was not made for division, and we would well define heaven because the closure of all strife. But on this life, we’ll sometimes experience painful severance from those whom we love. We won’t all the time value the identical.
The world, which the Lord opened to his prophet, threatened the existence of the one where he had dwelt. So,
they took Jeremiah
and threw him into the cistern of Prince Malchiah,
which was within the quarters of the guard,
letting him down with ropes.
There was no water within the cistern, only mud,
and Jeremiah sank into the mud (Jer 36:8).
Jesus said that he had come to create division amongst us. Is that not the role of the evil one slightly than the Lord of life? However the ruptures of this world were already quite well-formed. Now we have all the time been a sea of closed, often conflicting clams.
The Lord asks us to make yet one more selection, to decide on him. Like all other pick, it closes a few of the world to us. We’re still clams; we weren’t created to live without shells.
If we decide this love, if we decide Christ, we’ll grow.
But when we decide this love, if we decide Christ, we’ll grow. And when love is stymied, it must proceed to like. We must strive to like the opposite, despite our conflicting values. We must always not presume that every one sin lies on just one side of our divide. And maybe we are able to learn to just accept the love of those that, for a time, take the place of a loved one.
“Consider how he endured such opposition from sinners, so that you might not grow weary and lose heart” (12:6). The Letter to the Hebrews involves a climax by considering Christ’s own experience of conflict and division.
For the sake of the enjoyment that lay before him
he endured the cross, despising its shame,
and has taken his seat at the proper of the throne of God (12:2).
Divisions do end, even on earth. Don’t lose hope. Our shells can grow larger as we age. Those of others can as well. Within the meantime, we love as best we are able to. We hold the hurt inside our shell, and we do what we are able to to not cause pain in return. Life has its purpose. That is how God creates pearls.
