Cloud Mission Blog Day Four
“Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” Mark 4:40
Mission in the Cloud, Morning Prayer Room. This morning, as I prayed about the coming Triduum, with my “Be Not Afraid” flag beneath the cross, I found myself falling back again on this whole Light and Darkness thing. Also banging around in my head was the theme for the market memo I need to write later this morning for our investment clients, which my trusty assistant has scheduled to be done at 10:00 this morning. The theme there is going to be about how investors this week have moved ahead of apparent fundamentals, because they’ve all been looking for the light at the end of this Corona tunnel we’re in, and many of us think we see it. Just a pinpoint, perhaps, but when its pitch black and everyone is preparing for Armageddon, a pinpoint of light looks like a good thing to crawl to. And then I landed on the intersection of the whole works, of the mission and the Corona: the odd annual motto I’d chosen for my investment teams this year back in early January: “Be Not Afraid.” Why had I chosen that theme when everything seemed so good at the time? I’m not sure, frankly. But I remember telling them all, “Sometime this year, maybe by spring, we’re going to have a scary moment in this market. That will be the “Be Not Afraid” moment. That will be the moment we will need to be confident and to stand firm.”
As we enter the most sacred three days of the Church calendar, all of us I think do so with a little trepidation. As much as we know the story is going to have a good ending, we’re still a little scared. We’re still afraid. It all seems so horrible, so inhuman, so impossible. So dark.
Why is the path into darkness always the one that seems like the easier path? “Just take the 30 pieces of silver and run.” And why is the path to the Light, to the Cross, always seem so scary? Why did the disciples grow so terrified as the storm raged, even with the Son of God with them, literally with them? They could seem Him! Annoyingly, perhaps, asleep, but there none the less. Was the storm really going to sink with the Son of God—the Lord-- aboard? Was the storm going to take Him down? Really? And even after He calmed that storm, fed the 5,000, cured the blind man, raised Lazarus, why did they run from the Garden, as they will—as we will –tonight, after He’s just made them His priests?
As we enter into the darkness of the Garden tonight, and our Lord and God is taken from us into the tabernacle, we need to remember that this path, so difficult looking, so unnecessary, so bloody, is the path to the light. It’s the path towards the light at the end of the tunnel. The path to heaven. The good path. The joyful path. The path home to Jesus, the Lord.
Be Not Afraid.
A missionary April 9, 2020
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