Our time together closes in the port of Corinth with an ETA on the sabbath. We are beginning to identify with the Corinthians much the same as we viewed the Israelites: a people off course looking to navigate their way back.
We can almost feel the gentle rocking motion as if we are back in the boat on the Sea of Galilee as Paul in subsequent verses reels off life’s juxtapositions: honor/dishonor, ill repute/good repute, well known/unknown, sorrowful/rejoicing, poor/rich, and nothing/everything. We find ourselves reaching out, looking again for that stable place to recover our balance. Yet, to be without these variances in our daily experience means we are not living. And if we look back to 2 Corinthians 5:20, we note the place of balance as Paul advises us to “be reconciled to God.” For Paul, this reconciliation is a matter of urgency: “Now is the acceptable time.”
As a boy transitioning into manhood, I cannot forget the nights sometimes turned into morning, full moon hanging over Biscayne Bay, me leaning over a bridge catwalk railing with a long dip net. If my shrimping mates and I were fortunate to have the high tide turning and subsiding under the full moon, we would bring up a bounty of shrimp in our nets. I know that in those moments between the bay’s ebb and flow, some neighborhood boys found themselves “in the time of [God’s] favor” between the frontiers of life’s extremes. God continues to offer the gift of reconciliation, but we must choose to accept it and acknowledge the greatness of the gift.