Richard Kew has just posted a very thoughtful reflection on where we are right now as a Communion. I’m particularly impressed with the way he, following Turner and Radner, turns the question from “What are we to do?” to one of “What is God doing?”…

“[Trying to understand what is happening in TEC and PECUSA] had me returning to the question that Turner and Radner ask, ‘What is God doing?’ I have begun to come up with tentative answers and wish to share these with you in the hope that they will help shape your response to Columbus 2006, which I find myself believing was probably the last General Convention in the old scheme.

My first attempt to answer that question was to reaffirm one of the greatest and most comforting of all biblical truths, that God is sovereign and nothing on heaven or earth can prevail against him. This being the case our task as his covenant people is not to try to find the way through this morasse on our own but to see if through prayer, meditation, thoughtful pondering, Scripture, fasting, repentance, and every other Christian discipline to attempt to discover what his will and purpose is as we seek our way forward.

A key component of such discerning, as Turner and Radner point out, is patience — not a fruit of the Spirit that westerners in general and Americans in particular are particularly wont to either develop or use. The grace of patience, however, is writ large on many a page of Scripture as part of our response to the living God. I am convinced from my many years of ministry that we almost always complicate issues by rushing to resolve them, often depending on our own strength and insights. Perhaps we are being asked now to learn afresh what it means to wait upon the Lord seeking clarity from him before advancing.”

Read the rest here: What Is God Doing?

(Via The Kew Continuum.)