The Rocking Chair Class

When I was teaching The Bible as Literature, every semester as I reached Genesis 12, "The Call of Abraham," I would haul in a rocking chair to the classroom.  Sitting in the chair, I would tell the story of how I came to Delgado, a story full of the wondrous and strange design of God in my life.  Then I would invite others in the class to come sit in the rocking chair and to tell their own stories.  Students who would never "stand" before the class would eagerly come forward to sit and rock and reflect on their life's journey. 

Today, I have a rocking chair on my front porch.  It reminds me of my mission at this stage of my life --to reflect on my life's journey as somehow mysteriously designed by God-- and to invite others to do the same.  All spiritual writers recognize the universal patterns of the faith journey; it is the same journey outlined in the journey of Abraham, beginning in Genesis 12: Come to a land I will show you...and I will make of you a blessing to all....

In The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament, Richard Rohr writes this:

Evolutionary faith is not something you have to believe in.  It is something that you can verify in your own life.  But it is something that you can only see in retrospect.  Only from the vantage point of where you've gotten can you see how you got there, how the Lord was leading you from the beginning, and how the entire story was really a journey of faith.  People who have never trusted in God or who are just starting out in the life of faith cannot see this, because they have not yet experienced it.  But people who have experienced it eventually come to a point where they can begin to understand it, to see how the Lord was leading them from where they started out to where they ultimately got.

 

When they look back at their beginnings, people of faith can perceive the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary.  They can begin to see God's action in their lives, much the same as the Israelites looking back saw God's action in their history. But at the beginning, everything seems so ordinary.  When St. Francis started out begging stones to rebuild a church, he didn't know that the Lord was leading him into the rebuilding of the medieval Church. When St. Benedict or St. Ignatius or Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King were starting out, they weren't sure where they were being led. Maybe they weren't even certain that God was calling them to found orders or to start movements.  And certainly along the way there were dark periods when they did not know where they were going.  Only later, when they looked back on their lives, did they see their paths illuminated and understand that the Lord had been there from the very beginning, leading them all the way through (p. 111-112).

 

Reflecting on our life journey is a form of prayer; it can lead us to acknowledge the hand of God; it can lead to praise, thanksgiving, and worship of His love and providence on our behalf.  Most of Scripture is reflection and commentary on "what God has done for us."  It is not that we have loved God first, but that He has loved us and acted on our behalf.  Almost all of the psalms dance around the theme expressed in Psalm 118: I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me.  The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation (vv. 13-14).  But Psalm 106 is a sobering reminder of what happens to a people, to an individual, who refuses to remember what God has done:

 

When our fathers were in Egypt,

they gave no thought to your miracles;

they did not remember your many kindnesses,

and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea.....(v.7)

 

they soon forgot what He had done

and did not wait for His counsel...(v.13).

 

The psalm goes on to list the many results that follow forgetting what God has done for us:

 

(1) They forgot what God had done, and (2) they gave in to craving.  (3) They grew envious, and (4) they worshipped idols.  (5) They despised the inheritance of the Lord, and (6) did not believe His promises.  (7) They grumbled in their tents, and (8) did not obey the Lord.  (9) They yoked themselves to Baal, and (10) sacrificed (their children) to lifeless gods.  The progression of degradation listed here is similar to that progression outlined in the first chapter of Romans.

 

So many popular writers today, so many psychologists, etc. advise us to make a 'gratitude journal,' listing at the end of the day at least 3 things for which we are grateful, knowing that we cannot be grumpy and grateful at the same time.  One or the other attitude will inhabit our mental space and be reflected in our faces and our lives.  I have found again and again that by reflecting on where "God has been my Helper," I have discovered the marvelous paths He has led me on, and I have been restored again and again to praise, thanksgiving, and worship.   If I were still teaching today, I would have a rocking chair class at least once a semester, if not more often.