Year B, the Transfiguration

It is a glittering, blindingly bright day here in Maryland. Powerful wind gusts and an arctic hammer have driven temperatures into single digits and the wind chill is hovering at teens-below-zero. Dangerous, scandalously bright, bracing...

How fitting that this week's focus is on the blinding, brighter-than-bleach revelation of the living God on a mountaintop.

In Mark's gospel, God's voice this time is audible to Peter, James and John. This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased. Elijah and Moses are standing with the glittering, dazzling, whiter than white Jesus. They desperately want to stay in the presence of the divine. They don't know what lies ahead, but they surely are in awe of what they are encountering here and now.

And in 2 Kings, Elisha is devotedly following Elijah to his end, clamoring to stay in his presence to the very end. Elisha knows that he inherits Elijah's prophetic legacy and responsibility. But I wonder if he dreads the reality if that. Just another city in the presence of greatness...

God lovingly seeks our presence and calls us to the hard work of being lovingly present to the world around us. It would seem this is a millennia old struggle, to rest in the amazing presence of a living, moving, powerful God and to be called to a broken, hurting, struggling world.

My house is warm, safe, full of good music and books and food and the company of my love. The world outside is dangerous - quite literally - today. Why would I choose to open the door and step out into the cold?

For right now, I rest in God's presence, giving thanks for the many blessings of this past week. And then, there will be work to do. In the cold. Down the mountain. Gazing up at a glittering sky.