The Power of the Smallest Acts

And they told [Jacob], “Joseph [your son] is still alive! He is even ruler over all the land of Egypt.” He was stunned; he could not believe them. But when they told him all the words of Joseph…and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. Israel said, “Enough! My son Joseph is still alive. I must go and see him before I die.” (Genesis 45:26-28)

Can our actions possibly matter?

Much of the evidence points to a resounding no. Day after grinding day, the media show us the staggering size of our world, the tectonic trends that move nations and regions, the massive suffering on other continents. How can one person possibly make any impact at all? Why not just lapse into despair or, on the other extreme, live for ourselves and our own little corner of the world?

Then you run across stories like this.

Jacob’s sons had sold their brother Joseph into slavery—and told their father that Joseph was dead. Jacob had lived with the grief for years. Then, during a famine, his sons went to Egypt to buy food, only to find that Joseph had become a ruler, second only to Pharaoh. They bring the joyous news back to Jacob.

Then what happens? Jacob decides to follow every father’s most natural impulse: to go and see his beloved son.

And the whole history of Israel changes in an instant.

Maybe, if Jacob does not go, his clan does not settle in Egypt. They do not, over time, become a nation enslaved to the Egyptians. God has no reason to deliver the nation of Israel—and thus provide one of the greatest examples of God’s passion to save us. As a result, maybe we don’t even come to know God in quite the same way.

The very language of this passage foreshadows the impact of this small act. Up till now, the story refers to Jacob mostly by his birth name, Jacob. When he makes the decision to see his son, though, the passage suddenly calls him Israel—the name God gave him, the name that connotes his position as the patriarch of the future nation. In that one subtle name shift are the shades of what is to come.

This is such good news for us. The truth is, we have no way to tell whether even our smallest, most natural acts might have earth-shaking consequences. But clearly, as the story shows us, we do make an impact. It behooves us, then, to live our lives for good and not ill—to “do the things you have given us to do” (in the words of the Anglican prayer).

This good news also takes the pressure off. Jacob underwent no strategic planning process to consider the results of his actions. He did not attempt to “control outcomes.” He simply did what any father would do. When we live our lives in the Presence of the Divine, we can do the same, without obsessing over results—because the results are not up to us.

In short, then, this story liberates us to live with purpose, because we make an impact, without looking for results, because we can’t know the impact. We are free to lay aside our best-laid plans and simply do justice, love extravagantly, and walk humbly with our God.

Out of the Depths I Cry to You

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! (Psalm 130:1-2)

There is something all too familiar about the images of Silda Wall Spitzer standing by her disgraced husband’s side. I have seen that haggard look elsewhere.

In the mirror.

It is a look that can speak of unexpected upheaval or tired desperation, of sudden shocks or long tortuous battles. It is the look of someone who is losing a child to mental illness, who cannot escape the clutches of depression, who has been ground down by life’s vicissitudes…who, like Silda, has suddenly found a productive life destroyed by a tragedy in the classic sense.

If you’ve lived any length of time, you’ve probably seen that look in the mirror too.

It often comes with a complete loss of perspective. (I would suggest Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for a vivid depiction of this.) Accomplishing the simplest tasks can be impossible. One moves as through water, or rapidly curing concrete. Suddenly it is easy to understand the emotional wallop in the first two verses of the de profundis (quoted above), which we often pray to commemorate the dead.

What can we say to faces like these? What can we say when the faces are ours?

I don’t know that there’s a clear way forward. The typical platitudes are rarely comforting, whatever seeds of truth they contain. The silent, listening presence of others can bear much fruit; sometimes, however, they might be blessed with just the right thing to say, and silence would be counterproductive. Certainly there is no way around the distress; there is only the way through.

Faith rarely makes the distress go away quickly. But it does have two words to speak. One involves psalms like the de profundis. If we can cry to God so desperately—if we are free to scream at God as the psalmist does—it makes faith a safe space in which to grieve. Before God, we can let everything out and slowly, slowly, work our way through.

The other word will be spoken next week, during the Christian Holy Week, when we commemorate the brutal torture and death that Jesus endured. God may not magically set things right, but in the person of Jesus, God has worn this face.

Sometimes clinging to these words is all we can do when that face confronts us in the mirror.