Now we look at the other as neighbor and as God in "The Covenanted Self" by Walter Brueggemann.
It is...my judgment that we have no human neighbors who are as unlike us as this othering God is unlike us, and if in complaint and praise, in assertion and abandonment, we are genuinely at risk and in faith with this God, we shall find great resources of grace and courage for living with the neighbors, even the neighbor who is blatantly other.
What an interesting way to look at how we are to face our neighbor and deal with the stuff that we would usually want to ignore or reject. No "other" can be as "other" as this God of ours who is with us and separate from us and will not be owned by us or controlled by us or dominated by us. Therefore, as we come to experience this "other" who is God, we are being stretched so far beyond ourselves that the "other" who is our neighbor is not such a far place to go in order to find some common ground upon which we can begin to build a relationship. And yet, we all know how hard it is to step across the great abyss that separates me from you some times.
Connection: There is such grace available to us so that we can leap across any separation that attempts to establish itself between us. Some days we simply have to work at letting grace rule. At other times, we simply have to realize that grace will rule even as we try to stop it.
Come, Lord of the Lenten Journey, take us a bit farther out into the realm of the others within our life so that we will become more aware of you presence that is so close even as we see you so far away. Amen.
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