When Life is Precious, it is Precious

 

This morning I am meditating on the word, “precious”. Perhaps a strange word with which to enter Holy Week and yet, it has often been a word which surfaced at the cross, as a mother waited with her son, as others began to realize the “preciousness” of their salvation, the preciousness of a moment in time.

I began to list in my mind things precious to me in addition to Christ. My babies’ faces, my mother’s lambs and bunnies, every thought of my grandchildren. Synonyms like ‘dear’ and ‘cherished’ and even ‘sacred’ come to mind. All are wrapped somehow in visions of Love.

There is a gentleness about precious. There is a tenderness. 

And so I was caught up short by the title of a recent OnBeing podcast with the geographer (human geographer no less) Ruth Wilson Gilmore which was: Where life is precious, life is precious.

She of course goes on to explain what she means but I was already off in my own meanderings…

To me it speaks to the eternal, unchangeable nature of that which is precious. It simply is. It reminds me of Karl Barth’s koan: let God be God.

And in that realization is a blessed assurance that once one lands on something, someone, precious, well, it will always be thus. Once one knows precious one cannot unknow it!

Precious may indeed be vulnerable but never vanquished. My meditation took me to the very preciousness which lies within all creation. Where creation is precious, creation is precious. 

Then we humans come along (as Ruthie says, doing our Adam thing) and try to assert some dominion and control. Perhaps that is tragic and superfluous taking our commitment away from the precious, the sacred. But it is still precious; we might not be very much so!

Precious is that which is at the core of all things because all creation contains that spark of sacredness. I believe that try as we might, precious is at the heart of integrity, sacred integrity, and no one can destroy that, come what may or cost what it will!

All of these ruminations weave their way toward the hymn which bears the name of that preciousness to which we are tethered: Precious Lord, take my hand lead me on, help me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn..Through the storm, through the night, Lead me on, to the light, Take my hand, precious Lord

Lead me home.

And there it is…the most precious of moments, locations, spaces may be HOME. Again, tender, precious love of belonging.

This Holy Week, like all holy weeks, I feel the need to reach out my hand to a precious Savior.

I am coming out of a wilderness, battered, confused and somehow hopeful. I am seeking the comfort of home. 

We are journeying toward a precious moment and precious realization. May we practice resurrection life and all the precious signs of new beginnings and new life. And may we feel the precious hand lead us home.