Being Grounded

Our Father in heaven, holy be your name… (Matthew 6:9).

The first line of the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father is all about being grounded. The reality that God is our Heavenly Father - that means we have belonging, that means we are beloved. This is an an eternal and unalterable truth.

That’s why we started our series on politics with this line from scripture. It’s because without this grounding, we’re a mess when it comes to all the intense emotions and pulls and crises that go on in politics. Researcher Brene Brown puts it this way:

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

- Brené Brown

It seems like there’s a disproportionate amount of hurting each other (as Brown suggests) in politics. No wonder we need to be grounded.

Once you’re rooted, you’ve got a lot better chance at being active politically without it dominating you. Whether you protest or pray - or, perhaps better, both - when we know we’re held in unshakable love and by Almighty God, the ups and downs of politics impact us less. And, interestingly we can even fight harder politically when we’re grounded in divine love because we have access to the twin wells of strength and forgiveness that we need to press on through hardship, disappointment, and opposition.

Talk with Jesus about how to be more grounded today.