Seeing and Accepting the Unexpected

Matthew 14:26 - When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" and they cried out in fear.

So like us! When we see the unexpected we cry out in fear or laughter if it is funny. We, too, try to categorize what we have seen into words or images from our experience. We tame things with our labels. If we are afraid of said thing, we use negative words - terrorists, rapists, criminals, thugs. We gain psychic power by naming and categorizing.

And, like the disciples, we are often wrong about those snap categorizations. Jesus wasn't a ghost, Mexican people are not all rapists, Middle Easterners are not all terrorists, Black people are not all thugs. Yet we cling to these categories beyond reason in order to feel good about ourselves. We break relationship with our brothers and sisters so that we do not have to change or see them as they really are. And we imagine this makes us safe.

It does not. It divides us and makes us vulnerable to powerful messages that reinforce our biases, which in turn makes us vulnerable to those in power. Our fear makes us easy to manage by those who would exploit it. And it breaks our relationship with the God who created us. Yes, and who created those we would relegate to second-class citizenship.

My prayer for today is that I and we can have the courage to accept the unexpected and see Jesus rather than the ghost of our imaginations.
B