Psalm 67: 1-7 (links validated 12/12/24a)

But in this amazing scene, the Hobbit Frodo is near the dark land of Mordor, home to the evil Lord Sauron whose Ring of Power Frodo has been tasked to destroy. In this scene Frodo has become separated from his best friend Samwise Gamgee and the weariness of it all causes Frodo to collapse. But no sooner does he do so but he receives a bright vision of the Elf Queen Galadriel. She quite literally causes her face to shine upon Frodo in ways that somehow re-energize him and bring him back to his feet. Perhaps we don’t often pause to wonder why Israel so often pleaded with God to cause his face to shine on them but if we do think about it for a moment, perhaps we can understand why this is so needed as we, like Frodo, stumble through a world that is so very often a very dark place.

In the movie As Good As It Gets, actress Helen Hunt plays Carol Connelly, a waitress at a small New York City restaurant. But the main thing we soon learn about Carol is that she is a single mother of a young boy, Spencer, who has been seriously ill with a chronic breathing difficulty almost since birth. Carol’s life is consumed with caring for Spencer, and sometimes doing so takes her away from her job at the restaurant. Meanwhile, one of Carol’s regular breakfast customers is an utterly unpleasant man named Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson. Melvin is a well-known author. But he also has obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, few people who know him can generate much compassion for him seeing as Melvin has a personality that resembles curdled milk. Through a series of events, however, Melvin finds out about Carol’s son and so arranges to have her meet with a very expensive doctor...

Many of us are so used to the phrase “May the Lord’s face shine upon you” from the most famous benediction in the Bible that we maybe have lost touch with why this desire was so meaningful to ancient people like the Israelites. And that is in part because many of us really don’t know just how dark this world can get at night and how frightening the dark was to people in history. We live in a world that has the luxury of worrying about “light pollution.” Most of our cities are so well-illuminated even in the dead of a moonless night that the upward shining light has been known to disorient migrating flocks of birds. And, of course, our houses are well-lit day and night. Even without a nightlight, many of our homes can only get so dark at night given the presence of streetlights and such. But ancient people knew how dark it can get when there was nothing shining in the sky. The dark is scary. And so a desire to have God’s face “shine” on God’s people was in part a desire never to feel afraid, never to feel alone, never to feel lost in the murky darkness that descends on this world every night and in which all of us spend half of our lives. “The people living in darkness have seen a great light” the prophet Isaiah famously wrote. But you have to BE a people who knows what it’s like to live in grave darkness in the first place to know why the light of God’s face is such good news.

In the movie As Good As It Gets, actress Helen Hunt plays Carol Connelly, a waitress at a small New York City restaurant. But the main thing we soon learn about Carol is that she is a single mother of a young boy, Spencer, who has been seriously ill with a chronic breathing difficulty almost since birth. Carol’s life is consumed with caring for Spencer, and sometimes doing so takes her away from her job at the restaurant. Meanwhile, one of Carol’s regular breakfast customers is an utterly unpleasant man named Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson. Melvin is a well-known author. But he also has obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, few people who know him can generate much compassion for him seeing as Melvin has a personality that resembles curdled milk. Through a series of events, however, Melvin finds out about Carol’s son and so arranges to have her meet with a very expensive doctor. Melvin takes care of all the expenses and what’s more, the doctor finally puts Spencer on the road to long-term health. Carol is overjoyed to the point of not even being able to find the words with which to say thank-you to this unlikely hero in her life. But at one point she asks Melvin directly, “Why did you do this for us?” Melvin replies, in essence, by saying, “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. I wanted you to be able to come back to work so you could wait on me.” Carol responds, “You got any idea how creepy that sounds?” But that really was Melvin’s motivation—he arranged things so Carol would not be absent from the restaurant so often. His obsessive-compulsive nature meant he needed things to stay the same every day, including Carol’s being his waitress and not someone else...