The readings this week point to the importance of recognition—and the consequences of not recognizing. Did the Israelites recognize the prophets God sent them? If they did, what did they do? Do you see any prophets today? Do you as a Christian recognize how your salvation is through grace—a gift of God? Do you have faith in that? What do you see in the “Son of Man . . . lifted up”? The love of God? Eternal life?

Grief is an emotion too heavy for the heart to bear without breaking. We hear it masterfully captured in Psalm 137, as the exiled Israelites mourn the loss of home, custom, language, and religion in Babylon. This is a real, historical event that takes place in the center of the Old Testament. It’s almost useless to read Genesis through Jeremiah without appreciating how the promised land is both won and lost by God’s cherished people. All the Hebrew books of the Bible backwards and forwards must be read in light of a people who once walked so far from the path prescribed for them that they lost their coveted (and covenanted) land completely. How could we sing a song of the LORD in a foreign land? Even God seems beyond reach to this sorrowing displaced community. Some of us remember how singer Don McLean caught the spirit of this lament in the song “Babylon,” on the American Pie album back in 1972: “We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion.”

No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

HYPOTHESIS: Light is necessary for life. Thus began my young daughter’s science fair project. To prove her simple hypothesis, she proceeded to plant six bean seeds in pots and place three on a sunny window sill and three under a bed. By day 14, the three seeds on the window sill were showing signs of life with little sprouts shooting through the soil. The seeds in darkness were showing no activity. Hypothesis apparently proved. Conclusions were drawn.

O God, you so loved the world that you gave it your only Son. In the prayers we make to you see the faith that brings us to eternal life. We ask this in the name of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

"The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light.” All the readings this week speak of the importance of choices and their consequences. God gave the Israelites a chance to heed the prophets, but they “scoffed” at them, and so Jerusalem went up in flames. As it frequently does, the Gospel of John offers a stark choice between believing in Jesus/living forever and doing what those who “preferred darkness to light” did by not believing and therefore facing condemnation. The Letter to the Ephesians offers alternatives as well: Realize that “by grace you have been saved through faith,” not by your own work or initiative. The psalmist gets into the choices act as well: Let me never forget you, Lord! These decisions boil down to one thing: recognition—recognizing the Word of God incarnated in the Son of God as a free gift of God. That was the challenge to believers then as it is now.

I believe that I can return, no matter how far I’ve strayed. I believe that I have the inner strength to change. I believe that I can become truly devoted and close to God. —Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, The Empty Chair