Sunday, July 7, 2013: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

You may be better organized than I am, but in my overscheduled life, every once in a while I miss an appointment. Then comes the dreaded e-mail: “I have on my calendar that we were doing lunch today at noon. I looked for you, but didn’t see you. Call me . . .”

Now comes the fantasy move, the leap into a world of wondering that Jerome Berryman calls “godly play.” What would it be like to receive such an e-mail from God? “By the way, my reign came very near you this morning and you completely missed it. Meet you next time? GOD.”

Hermann Hesse explored this idea years ago in his novel The Journey to the East. The protagonist H. H. writes a history of his experience in an amazing religious movement that’s centered on a servant/prophet named Leo. H. H. describes how the pilgrimage journey ran into difficulties and abruptly ended. But in the course of the novel, readers discover, along with H. H., that a man H. H. saw who had looked much like Leo was Leo. In fact, the journey had been continuing around H. H., although he hadn’t noticed it; he had dropped out without realizing what had happened. I imagine another e-mail from God: “What has become of the love you had at first? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Shall we do church? I’ll call you again, GOD.”