Devotions Based on Psalms: Psalm 130

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsWednesday, July 10

St. John’s University, Collegivelle, MN, 56231 2006

Wednesday, July 1
By Mary Nichols

Psalm 130
A song of ascents.
¹Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
²Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
³If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
⁴But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
⁵I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
⁶I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
⁷Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
⁸He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

This psalm begins with the writer calling out to God from “the depths”, a deep chasm of human suffering. This abyss can be different shapes, but each of us have or will have some experience with it. Grief, sickness, depression, abuse, coronavirus anxiety and despair can throw us in the depths.

The psalmist doesn’t cry to God in abandonment, but with hope and expectation that God will hear his voice for mercy. He is not calling out to a God of vengeance, but a God who loves, forgives and redeems. This psalm reminds us that we can be confident that we are not condemned to this abyss and trust God to listen to our cries. We can wait and hope with expectation for redemption. With God there is mercy, forgiveness and unfailing love.

In Garrett’s sermon ‘A Certain Man Had Two Sons’ on June 21, he stated, “The good news for us is that despair is where God places the seeds of hope.” As human beings we can fall into the depths of despair where hope may not be readily visible. But, the seeds of hope are already growing there. We can trust and find hope even in the abyss.

Let us wait for the Lord with hope and expectancy with our whole being.
Let us put our hope in His word.
May our Woodland Family put our hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love.

Devotions Based on Psalms: Psalm 25

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsSaturday, June 270

St. John’s University, Collegivelle, MN, 56231 2006

Saturday, June 27
By: Joel Kirn

Psalm 25 New International Version (NIV)
Psalm 25
Of David.
¹In you, Lord my God,
I put my trust.
²I trust in you;
do not let me be put to shame,
nor let my enemies triumph over me.
³No one who hopes in you
will ever be put to shame,
but shame will come on those
who are treacherous without cause.
⁴Show me your ways, Lord,
teach me your paths.
⁵Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
⁶Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
⁷Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you, Lord, are good.
⁸Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
⁹He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way.
¹⁰All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.
¹¹For the sake of your name, Lord,
forgive my iniquity, though it is great.
¹²Who, then, are those who fear the Lord?
He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.^[^b^]
¹³They will spend their days in prosperity,
and their descendants will inherit the land.
¹⁴The Lord confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.
¹⁵My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my feet from the snare.
¹⁶Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
¹⁷Relieve the troubles of my heart
and free me from my anguish.
¹⁸Look on my affliction and my distress
and take away all my sins.
¹⁹See how numerous are my enemies
and how fiercely they hate me!
²⁰Guard my life and rescue me;
do not let me be put to shame,
for I take refuge in you.
²¹May integrity and uprightness protect me,
because my hope, Lord, is in you.
²²Deliver Israel, O God,
from all their troubles!

I first read through this Psalm by David in college and was struck by three things; actually, really four but the fourth I’ll leave you to consider. Penitence, however, is the first theme. Three times he asks for forgiveness from sin and acknowledges his own state as a sinner including a reference in verse to “sins of my youth and rebellious ways,” which may have been why it struck me over 30 years ago and continues to speak now for in my heart I am ever the rebel. The second was and still is God as teacher. This theme is also repeated three times in verses 4, 8 and 10. The third major theme is how affliction and oppression from both outside sources and inward anguish are interwoven with the writer’s sin. Wrapping these ideas together while looking at our ourselves as seen through the lens of this writing shows the writer and us to be our own worst enemies. And yet, even as David surveys the land and finds himself despised; he is not alone. Here, in the midst of the Valley of Death, his hope is in the Lord.

Might this have been penned during David’s being driven from Jerusalem by his son, Absolem, when David, while he is running away is even cursed by a supporter of Saul and chased by those he once considered friends and allies? If there was ever a time for despair this was it: when a civil war within both country and family is brewing and David knows his own handling of Absolem, starting with the rape of Absolem’s sister by another of David’s sons then David’s silence as Absolem first took revenge and then filled the leadership vacuum left by his father’s continued silence led to this moment. We won’t know for sure until we can ask him but what we do know is even in despair and in the face personal failing, David turns to and relies on God, firmly believing God will ultimately protect him. His belief was not in vain. Scripture tells us David was eventually restored to the throne though not without struggle and personal pain. That may be our path as well, but we too can be restored.

Questions:

How old was David when he wrote this?
Does the Psalm speak to you in some way that brings moments to mind?
Are there painful moments where you know your own mistakes and sins have created rifts between you, God and others, and for which you have not repented?
Have you, like David, acknowledged both your own sin and God’s sovereignty?
The fourth observation, and you be the judge… We are, even as lay persons, to consider scripture through the eyes of both faith and criticism. I’m personally not sure the last verse wasn’t added later. To me, it doesn’t fit with the very personal themes expressed in the Psalm and even the language in the various versions I’ve read doesn’t have the same lilt. What do you think?

Devotions Based on Psalms: Psalm 82

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsWednesday, June 170

St. John’s University, Collegivelle, MN, 56231 2006

Wednesday, June 17
By Diana Bridges

Psalm 82

God stands in the congregation of the mighty;
He judges among the gods.
How long will you judge unjustly,
And show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy;
Free them from the hand of the wicked.
They do not know, nor do they understand;
They walk about in darkness;
All the foundations of the earth are unstable.
I said, “You are gods,
And all of you are children of the Most High.
But you shall die like men,
And fall like one of the princes.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth;
For You shall inherit all nations.

The writers of the Hebrew scriptures assume the reality of the Creator of all that is. They say that only a fool would say that there is no God (Ps. 14:1). Occasionally, however, they provide some drama regarding the so-called gods who have the loyalty of the locals in Canaan. The story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 is a particularly colorful account, and focuses on a would-be power struggle that ends up being a rout.

Psalm 82 draws the distinction in a completely different way. It imagines God overseeing a heavenly council of lower-level deities, berating them not for their lack of strength, but rather for their lack of justice: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Ps. 82:2-4)

God clearly stands in solidarity with the marginalized, working to protect them and improve their standing in society. The gods of the land have no such priority, perhaps preferring to focus on the offerings of their devoted followers.

In fact, those gods have no more substance than any other idols worshipped throughout history. The psalmist has his eye on those in his community who might give lip service to the God of Israel while living out more convenient and self-centered values. They may as well be worshipping a lower-level deity if their values have strayed so far.

However, unlike the gods who are characters in this drama, we always have the opportunity to stand up and take notice. We might have lived our lives up until yesterday oblivious to the plight of our neighbors, but today is filled with new mercies and possibilities. We can always chart a better path, both individually and as a church family.

Devotions Based on Psalms: Psalm 51

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsMonday, June 10

St. John’s University, Collegivelle, MN, 56231 2006

Monday, June 1^st
By Conrad Navarro

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
–Psalm 51

I like the Psalms. They are religious poetry and as such speak truths from the deepest feelings, both joy and sorrow, of human emotion. As poetry, songs, and hymns, I would caution us to make deep theological propositions from them. What they do best is take the deep theological and scriptural tenets and paint them in beautiful poetic form. Psalm 51 is attributed to David after committing adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband Uriah. However, nowhere in the psalm does David mention these events. The closest allusion to it is when he mentions “bloodguilt” as one of the many transgressions he confesses.

For simplicity’s sake, we will proceed from the assumption and understanding that David wrote the psalm after his sins attributed to the Bathsheba affair. David became well aware of his sin. Nonetheless, he did not start out with that self-awareness. As you know, it took the prophet Nathan to tell him a parable about injustice. Throughout the encounter with Nathan, it never occurs to David that, “You are the man!” Yet, once made aware of his sin, David became spiritually and emotionally conscious of it and pens this beautiful psalm of God’s grace.

In the 1950s psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham developed what is known in counseling as the Johari Window (named after their two first names, “Jo” and “Hari”). The theory claims that we all have a window to our inner selves which we can peek into. This window can either be very open and we can see a panoramic view of ourselves and become self-aware, or it can be barely open and we cannot see much of who and why we are. In other words, we can be blind to our own flaws and not know it. The more our window is open the more we can see into our inner selves and make necessary changes.

The Air Force sent me to do a year of Clinical Pastoral Education residency at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base. A year of CPE residency is spiritual, emotional, and psychological surgery. We arrive with our “windows” barely open (in my case, completely shut and padlocked). Through a year of intense grappling with a group of residents and a supervisor who guides us through the process, our windows start to ever so slowly open and we see why we do the things we do and say the things we say. If a resident allows CPE to go through her or him, the resident changes. CPE is similar to a “born again” experience where a person is never the same after a significant event in his or her life. After a year of CPE and intensely staring inside your window, something happens, something changes in you. From then on, when a conflict arises with another person, the self-aware person always starts with himself or herself. “What did I do to contribute to this conflict?” Perhaps nothing, but that is the starting point of a self-aware person.

David, went through a year’s worth of CPE in one brief encounter with the prophet Nathan. Unaware of his sin, he became remorsefully aware of what he had done. So much so, that when he starts his prayer he does not address God by God’s most holy name, Yahweh. David addresses God as “Elohim.” He does not even feel worthy to mention God’s most holy name. (This reminded me of the sinner in the Temple praying to God and not even being able to look up to heaven.) David did not make excuses. He did not blame others. He did not say the devil made him do it. “He was the man,” and he knew it. He immediately looked inside his “window” and saw his sin. Consequently, what David discovered is that as horrific as his sin was, God’s grace was greater.

The entire psalm is a wonderful example of contrition, confession, and the amazing grace of God. In verse twelve David says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” What sin does, and to some extent our faults, is break the fellowship with God and others. As David says, his sin was against God, but it also did not go well for Bathsheba or Uriah. Whether intentionally or not, sometimes the things we do hurts God and others. It damages the relationship. What it does not do is sever the relationship. David wants the joy of his salvation to be restored, the joy not the salvation. David never lost his salvation, his relationship with God as God’s son, but the fellowship of the relationship had suffered. Paul tells us in Romans that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. Nothing!

David’s now wide open Johari Window led him to do the only thing he could do, ask God for forgiveness. Just as David felt that he was a sinner before being born and as such could do nothing about his sin as an embryo inside his mother’s womb, he knows that he also cannot do anything about it now. David could not pay nor offer any sacrifice to atone for his sin. All he could do is ask God for forgiveness. That is the first step of any reconciliation, asking for forgiveness.

That is also all we can do. Sometimes having a memory is a good thing if it helps us to remember what we did wrong in order not to repeat the same mistake. The other side of the memory coin is that sometimes it is not a good thing if all we do is dwell on our sin and mistakes in life. It will not allow us to move on, to restore the joy of our salvation, our forgiveness, our life. We are safe and secure in our relationship with God. Nothing can ever separate us from it. Not even our unaware selves. That sounds like a lot of happy thoughts and a lot of joy. I like that! I need that!

A Time of Reflection and Prayer
We have all been hurt and hurt others. Do you remember those times? Was the relationship restored through forgiveness? If so, live in the joy of the Lord.

A Musical Guide for Prayer: Mercy Me’s “Dear Younger Me”

Dear younger me
Where do I start
If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far
Then you could be
One step ahead
Of all the painful memories still running thru my head
I wonder how much different things would be
Dear younger me, dear younger me

Dear younger me
I cannot decide
Do I give some speech about how to get the most out of your life
Or do I go deep
And try to change
The choices that you’ll make cuz they’re choices that made me
Even though I love this crazy life
Sometimes I wish it was a smoother ride
Dear younger me, dear younger me

If I knew then what I know now
Condemnation would’ve had no power
My joy my pain would’ve never been my worth
If I knew then what I know now
Would’ve not been hard to figure out
What I would’ve changed if I had heard

Dear younger me
It’s not your fault
You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross
Dear younger me

You are holy
You are righteous
You are one of the redeemed
Set apart a brand new heart
You are free indeed

Every mountain every valley
Thru each heartache you will see
Every moment brings you closer
To who you were meant to be
Dear younger me, dear younger me

Taking a Mediterrean Vacation with St. Paul as a Guide: “…forgiveness of sins…”

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsThursday, May 280

Thursday, May 28th

I, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
–Colossians 1:1-20

Like so many of you I have been fascinated by the creativity and intelligence of so many doctors and scientists who are investigating not only the cause and effect of the coronavirus, but the possibilities for treatments and vaccines. They understand the molecular world of biochemistry in ways that stun us with their insights and knowledge. As I’ve watched interviews with some of them about their work, I’m reminded of something that the theologian Dallas Willard once said to a group of us attending a conference at Regent College.: “Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived.” It was such a simple sentence, but for me, it was a most profound statement. So much of my study had been trying earnestly to understand the human Jesus that I had almost, in the parlance of the time, “dumbed” Jesus down. Perhaps I needed to readjust my theological glasses and get a more comprehensive view of Jesus. Paul’s letter to the Colossians has helped bring that into better focus.

Colossians has long been a controversial letter for Pauline scholars. The letter proclaims that it is written by Paul, but in the salutation he joins to his name that of his traveling companion, Timothy. This would not be considered all that unusual, because he was prone to do that in his writing. However, some scholars point out that the body of the letter itself reveals several instances where it would seem that this is not Paul writing, but someone in the Pauline tradition. The question of whether Paul actually wrote this letter is one of ongoing theological discussion. For our purposes, we will assume that Paul sent this letter, not only to a church in a place called Colossae, but to us.

This mysterious letter is one of Paul’s four Imprisonment Epistles (The others are Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon.), and it gives us much to wonder about. We don’t know the exact location of his captivity at the time of its writing. And the city of Colossae is a bit of a mystery itself, in that it was leveled by an earthquake just a few years after this letter was drafted. The letter reveals a fondness that Paul had for the church. It was not one of the congregations that he had started himself. In fact, he had not visited it when he made his first missionary journey to Asia Minor, but he had received reports of its faithfulness. Thus, he writes this letter to express his affection and appreciation, and to encourage them in their Christian walks, especially in the face of heretical teachings that were causing problems among some of the members. We do not know the exact content of these teachings (Historians suggest that astrology, angel-worship, Greek religious influences, and cultic practices all may have played a part.), but it is obvious from Paul’s tone that he considers the false ideas a deadly danger to the young church.

Yet another mystery is found in verses 15-20 of today’s passage, which are separated above as a distinct paragraph for identification purposes. This portion of the scripture has a distinct style and a unique vocabulary, prompting students of Colossians to believe that it is actually a hymn, possibly a baptismal hymn that was already well-known and in use by first-century congregations. It is thought that Paul may have adapted this part of their liturgy, perhaps tweaked a word or phrase here and there, to effectively make his case even further, reminding his brothers and sisters that Christ gives meaning to the entire universe, and that Christ alone gives meaning and purpose to life. Paul is imploring them to put Christ first in their lives, and he does that in this letter with an intense, purposeful mixture of heart and head. He knew from personal experience the consequences of a city, a church and even a person who did not make Christ a priority in their lives.

Albert Schweitzer, who wore many proverbial hats as a physician, theologian, humanitarian, philosopher, organist, and writer, made many contributions to the study of Paul’s teachings. In Schweitzer’s 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, he wrote:

Jesus comes to us as One unknown,
without a name, as of old, by the lakeside.
He came to those men who knew him not.
He speaks to us the same word:
“Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks
which he has to fulfill in our time.
He commands.
And to those who obey him,
whether they be wise or simple,
he will reveal himself
in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings
which they shall pass through in His fellowship,
and, as an ineffable mystery,
they shall learn in their own experience
who he is.

In the 1976 film Jesus of Nazareth, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, an eight-hour miniseries that is still shown on television every year around Easter time, Jesus was played by the fine British actor Robert Powell; Olivia Hussey portrayed Mary, his mother; Anne Bancroft was Mary Magdalene; and Ernest Borgnine had a small but crucial role as the centurion whose son Jesus healed and who was later present at the crucifixion. As Borgnine tells it: “When it came time for my scene during the crucifixion, the weather was chill and gray. The camera was to be focused on me at the foot of the cross, and so it was not necessary for Robert Powell, the actor who portrayed Jesus, to be there. Instead, Zeffirelli put a chalk mark on a piece of scenery beside the cameraman. ‘I want you to look up at that mark,’ he told me, ‘as if you were looking at Jesus.’ I hesitated. Somehow I wasn’t ready. I was uneasy. ‘Do you think it would be possible for somebody to read from the Bible the words Jesus said as He hung on the cross?’ I asked. I knew the words well from the days of my childhood in an Italian-American family in Connecticut, and I’d read them in preparation for the film. Even so, I wanted to hear them now. ‘I will do it myself,’ Zeffirelli said. He found a Bible, opened it to the Book of Luke, and signaled for the camera to start rolling. As Zeffirelli began reading Christ’s words aloud, I stared up at that chalk mark, thinking what might have gone through the centurion’s mind. That poor man up there, I thought. I met him when he healed my servant who is like a son to me. Jesus says he is the Son of God, an unfortunate claim during these perilous times. But I know he is innocent of any crime. ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ The voice was Zeffirelli’s, but the words burned into me – the words of Jesus. (Luke 23:34-46) Forgive me, Father, for even being here, was the centurion’s prayer that formed in my thoughts. I am so ashamed, so ashamed. ‘Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise,’ said Jesus to the thief hanging next to him. If Jesus can forgive that criminal, then He will forgive me, I thought. I will lay down my sword and retire to my little farm outside of Rome. Then it happened. As I stared upward, instead of the chalk mark, I suddenly saw the face of Jesus Christ, lifelike and clear. It was not the face of Robert Powell I was used to seeing, but the most beautiful, gentle visage I have ever known. Pain-seared, sweat-stained, with blood flowing down from thorns pressed deep, his face was still filled with compassion. He looked down at me through tragic, sorrowful eyes with an expression of love beyond description. Then his cry rose against the desert wind. Not the voice of Zeffirelli, reading from the Bible, but the voice of Jesus himself: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ In awe I watched Jesus’ head slump to one side. I knew he was dead. A terrible grief welled within me, and completely oblivious of the camera, I started sobbing uncontrollably. ‘Cut!’ yelled Zeffirelli. Olivia Hussey and Anne Bancroft were crying, too. I wiped my eyes and looked up again to where I had seen Jesus. He was gone. Whether I saw a vision of Jesus that windswept day or whether it was only something in my mind, I do not know. It doesn’t matter. For I do know that it was a profound spiritual experience, and that I have not been quite the same person since. I believe that I take my faith more seriously. I like to think that I’m more forgiving than I used to be. As that centurion learned two thousand years ago, I too have found that you simply cannot come close to Jesus without being changed.”

Perhaps in kneeling today, we’ll look up and have a better understanding of Jesus the Christ.

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

Years ago J.B. Phillips wrote a most interesting book, Your God Is Too Small. Take some time today to consider the grandeur of God. Imagine looking at this world as a scientist might, through a microscope or telescope, and see that there is more than meets the human eye or comprehension.

In the “hymn” portion of Paul’s letter, we find descriptions of Christ as: the image of the invisible God; firstborn of all creation; head of the body, the church; the indwelling fullness of God. Does one of these resonate with your belief and understanding more than another? Would there be another term that better portrays your faith’s image?

Paul used a hymn to speak to the hearts of his listeners. Music is such a force in our memories, thoughts and emotions. Can you call to mind a hymn, song, or chorus that is meaningful to you? Sing it as a prayer and as a way for God to speak to you.

A Poetic Guide for Prayer: Gerard Manley Hopkin’s “God’s Grandeur”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Sign Language: John’s Perception of the Messiah: “Do you want to be made well?”

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsMonday, May 180

The Saint John’s Bible, John Frontispiece: The Word Made Flesh. Donald Jackson, 2002

Monday, May 18^th

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
–John 5:1-14

In John Claypool’s iconic book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, he penned a phrase that has always moved me; he describes being “initiated into the fraternity of the sorrowing.” In these strange, difficult days, I believe that most of us, along with a majority of people in the world, would agree that we, too, have joined those ranks on a level we never anticipated. Any of us who believed in pat answers or easy solutions have been knocked from our proverbial high-horses by a host of new mysteries and unanswered questions. One of the most perplexing conundrums we face with this novel virus is its utterly random, capricious behavior, affecting the old and young, healthy and sick, doctors and patients, rich and poor. We residents of modern western civilization, who felt so invincible just a few months ago, may visualize today’s gospel story with just a bit more empathy and awareness. I know I do. If you were not a member before, welcome to the fraternity!

This third “sign” of John takes us to a pool in Jerusalem, a pool that has been known by many names — Bethesda, Bethsaida, Bethzatha, Siloam, and simply the “sheep pool” (This was due to its close proximity to Jerusalem’s “sheep gate”.). The literal translation of the Aramaic word is “house of mercy.” Along with the mystery of the name, there was for some time a question about whether such a pool actually existed, with some wondering whether it was an invention of John’s imagination, with the five colonnades being merely symbolic. There were no known examples of pentagonal pools in antiquity, and some critics of John and the Bible took that absence as an argument against the historicity of the Bible and John’s Gospel. However, the identity and site of this pool were finally established to the satisfaction of most scholars, when, in 1888, in connection with the repair of Jerusalem’s Church of St. Anne, an ancient reservoir was found. In addition, a faded fresco on one of the old walls of the church pictures an angel ‘troubling’ the water. After a century, The Biblical Archaeology Society identified this pool as the one mentioned in John’s Gospel.

The historical and archaeological questions have troubled scholars for years, but the theological questions are just as puzzling – Why did Jesus enact this healing? And why did John see this as a sign of Jesus as Messiah? The first question has so many corollaries. First of all, there was a large crowd of people desperately awaiting the chance to be the beneficiaries of healing if, and only if, they could be the first in the pool after the troubling of the water. (How that idea came into being is anyone’s guess. However, the early Christian author Tertullian , born in 155 CE, seems to believe it to be true, because in his treatise, On Baptism V, he writes: “An angel, by his intervention, was wont to stir the pool at Bethsaida. They who were complaining of ill health used to watch for him; for whoever was the first to descend into these waters, after his washing ceased to complain.”) Needless to say, the origin of the legend is a mystery. Nevertheless, around that pool would have been one of the saddest gatherings imaginable. And of all these cases, Jesus chooses this one man to heal.

The sick man himself was an enigma. He declared that he had been there for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years! Thirty-eight days would have seemed long for most people. But this sad man had been there for a lifetime. What’s more, the man didn’t approach Jesus; Jesus approached him. To make matters more difficult, insightful commentators, including Fred Craddock and Will Willimon, invite us to take note that there’s not one word in this passage about the sick man’s faith; not one hint that he believed in Jesus or anything else except the magic water in the pool. And, if we read just a little further, we see that he is never recorded as being grateful for being healed. In fact, when the religious authorities informed him that healing and mat-carrying were both illegal on the Sabbath, and asked him, “Who healed you?”, he first claimed to not know, eventually identifying Jesus as the perpetrator: “Jesus broke the Sabbath laws, not me!” That is the man Jesus healed.

Of all the mysteries of this text, the one that catches my attention is the question Jesus asked the man, “Do you want to be healed?” At first blush, it seems like such an obvious question. Just pondering that a bit, I’ve thought some of the strange questions that people sometimes ask: You walk into your office, drenched from head to foot, and someone asks, “Is it raining outside?” The phone rings in the middle of the night, and the caller queries, “I didn’t wake you, did I?”(And just as crazily, we answer something like, ”Oh no, don’t worry about it . . . we were just getting the dishes done!”) Your spouse calls to you from the other side of the house, again and again, each time louder, until she finally comes to find you, discovers you with your cell phone held to your ear, and asks, “Oh, are you on the phone?” Or how about this one? I’ve asked it a few times: “Is there something wrong, officer?” Or, another… You, along with three other people, are crawling on the floor, searching for a contact lens, and as certain as sunrise, the next person who walks up is apt to say: “Did you lose something?”

I guess we have all heard (and asked) our share of obvious questions at one time or another. And doesn’t Jesus’ question today sound a bit ludicrous? “Do you want to be healed?” He asked that question of a man who had been sick for 38 years. However, it is a penetrating question, perhaps an important question for us . . . Do we want to be healed, really? I mean, do we truly want to be rid of the unhealthy parts of our lives?

In his book, Space and Light, Marius von Senden tells the story of the first people in the world to undergo successful cataract surgery. All of them, blind for years, suddenly received their sight. Their stories about the experience were wondrous and moving, but some quite sad. They described the world the way a newborn baby or an alien might upon seeing it all for the first time. One newly-sighted girl was shown some photographs and then some paintings by her mother. “Why do they put those dark marks all over them?” she asked. “Those aren’t dark marks,” her mother responded, “they are shadows.” A second girl was so stunned by the radiance of the world that she kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When she finally opened them, she saw only a field of light against which everything seemed to be in motion. She could not distinguish objects, but gazed at everything around her, saying over and over again, “Oh God! How beautiful!” But not everything was beautiful for these folks. Unable to judge distances, they reached out for things far away or cracked their shins on pieces of furniture they perceived only as patches of color. The world turned out to be bigger than they had thought – bigger and infinitely more complex. Unable to control it, many fell into depression. Seeing themselves in a mirror for the first time, some became terribly self-conscious about their appearance, while others refused to go out at all. The distressed father of one young woman wrote to her surgeon that his daughter had taken to shutting her eyes when she walked around the house, that she seemed the happiest when she pretended to be blind again. A fifteen-year-old boy finally demanded to be taken back to the local home for the blind. “I can’t stand it anymore!” he said. “If things aren’t altered, I will tear my eyes out!” He wanted to tear his eyes out? After being rescued from a world of darkness and presented with a world of color, depth, movement and marvelous sights? Why? For some it was just too much – too much to see, to do, to be. It was better before in the darkness – smaller, quieter, familiar, safer.
All of this is to ask, how is this time helping us to see?

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

Life is continual formation. Many elements are transformative — relationships, a sense of passion/purpose, learning, spirituality/prayer, joy, suffering, healing or lack of healing… Can you identify the things forming your life right now?
Is there something — physical, emotional, psychic, spiritual — in your life that needs healing? Ask God for awareness, strength, and courage to address that need.
As a people we are enduring an intense time of change, individually and collectively. Who are we now called to be? How can God’s grace and love guide our formative process?

A Poetic Guide for Prayer: William E. Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

The Parables and The Pandemic: “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsFriday, May 80

The Sower, Vincent van Gogh
Copyright: www.bridgemanart.com
Original: https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-the-sower

Friday, May 8^th

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
–Luke 15:11-32

In these days of quarantine I have had the luxury of watching Ken Burns’ various documentaries. One that caught my attention was his Jazz series, where he traces the history of this music that was an American gift to the world. I was most interested in seeing how the big band era came about with all its colorful characters – Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and so many others. The reason for my fascination has been that my father was a product of that era. Coming from Czechoslovakia, my grandparents wanted my dad to play the violin, which he did, and was from all accounts quite talented, studying at Juilliard for awhile. However, his love was the trombone, and he would often swap out his violin to play in bands in New York City, unbeknownst to his parents. When the war came along, my father was stationed in West Texas where he trained bombardiers (I guess the Air Force felt that if one could learn to aim bombs in the winds of West Texas, one could do that anywhere!). There he met my mother and after the war, they made a sojourn to live near New York City, but with no work available, they returned to West Texas where he worked as an accountant for a number of companies. As I was growing up, I saw him retreat to his bedroom many evenings, listening to LPs of big band music, which I, of course, dismissed as outdated and uninteresting compared to my idols, the Beatles and the Beach Boys. What didn’t dawn on me until I watched Burns’ series was that my dad changed his life path for the good of his family. Sadly enough, I never heard him play either instrument, nor did I fully appreciate his giving up a musical dream for our good. How I would love to be able to talk to him about it now… What a difference a perspective makes!

I believe that perspective is the point of today’s parable. It is one of Jesus’ most famous stories, with more sermons, plays, paintings and even songs composed about it than perhaps any other. Interestingly enough, its title, The Prodigal Son, has missed the meaning of the story. Jesus never titled his parables, but over the years folks in the church took it upon themselves to create titles. The first reference to this parable as The Prodigal Son, comes from the Vulgate, the 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It uses the term filius prodigus, and while the word prodigal can mean wasteful, it can also be defined as “lavish, luxuriant.” My point is that the Latin translator who gave us this title could have missed the original meaning, because I believe that this story is not so much one of a wandering, wasteful son, as it is of a loving, lavish father, pater prodigus, neither of whose sons really understood him. After all, the story begins, “There once was a man who had two sons.”

The thing that strikes me today is that we so often focus on the sons, and rightfully so, in some instances. This story reveals the human inclination to sibling rivalry. It would seem that we have a pre-Copernican or, may I say, “pre-Prodigal” tendency to compete with our brothers and sisters for our parents’ attention and favor. The late Henri Nouwen, Dutch priest and theologian, once said that, “The hardest thing for us to understand is how God can love all human beings with the same unlimited love, while at the same time loving each of them in a totally unique way . . .” Nouwen went on, “Somehow, we think we can only fully enjoy our being loved by God if others are loved less than we are.” Of course, that misunderstanding regarding parental love consistently sows discord in family life, much to the chagrin of parents. At my mother’s funeral, one of the best things noted about her was that a good case could be made by each of her children and grandchildren that she loved them best. She did exemplify the amazing economics of God’s love — No matter how much love you give from your “account”, the principal is never depleted. I think that is the economics’ lesson that Jesus wanted to teach and for us to learn . . . that, as Augustine said, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” This economics of God can best be described as “prodigal.”

Professor Tom Long tells about one of his students who wrote an essay, reminiscing about her father. She said that when she was young, she was very close to her father. The family would have big parties with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Their tradition at these parties was to put on polka music and dance. Eventually, someone would put on the “Beer Barrel Polka;” and her father would come up to her, tap her on the shoulder and say, “I believe this is our dance,” and they would dance. Once when she was a teenager and in one of those teenaged moods and the “Beer Barrel Polka” began to play, her father tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I believe this is our dance,” and she snapped at him, “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!” Her father turned away and never asked her to dance again. “Our relationship was difficult all through my teen years,” she said. “When I would come home late from a date, my father would be sitting there in his chair, half asleep, wearing an old bathrobe, and I would snarl at him, “What do you think you’re doing?” He would look at me with sad eyes and say, “I was just waiting for you.” “When I went away to college,” the woman wrote, “I was so glad to get out of his house and away from him and for years I never communicated with him, but as I grew older, I began to miss him. One day I decided to go to the next family gathering, and when I was there, somebody put on the “Beer Barrel Polka.” I drew a deep breath, walked over to my father, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I believe this is our dance.” He turned toward me and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Jesus’ story was an attempt to get the folks in his crowd, the older and younger brothers, if you will, to see God not so much as judgmental tyrant but as exponentially-loving parent. Like that father in the essay, our Heavenly Parent’s words are, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

Take time to think about your parents and/or parent-figures in your life. Consider how your perspective of them changed over the years as you grew to see them as human beings with both gifts and challenges. Thank God for them.
Take time to think about the children in your life, or perhaps the children in our church. How might they learn of God’s love from you?
How might we as a congregation articulate and share the prodigal love of God?

A Poetic Guide for Prayer: Richard Wilbur’s “The Writer”

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

The Parables and The Pandemic: The start of Luke’s parables!

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsFriday, May 10

The Sower, Vincent van Gogh
Copyright: www.bridgemanart.com
Original: https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-the-sower

Friday, May 1^st

* Editor’s Note: Today we move to examining Luke’s parables. I find it interesting that there must have been many stories that Jesus told, but that the individual Gospel writers chose just some of those to illustrate their perspectives of Jesus. Of course, that brings up all kinds of questions – Why did they choose the particular parables they chose for their Gospels (Ten of the parables are unique to Matthew’s Gospel; fourteen are unique to Luke’s Gospels; Mark has but one; nine are common to both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels; four are common to all three of the Synoptic Gospels; and John records none.)? When comparing the parables held in common, why do Matthew’s depictions appear to be more stringent? Why didn’t John, who was the most literarily creative of the writers, include any parables at all? Curiosities aside, Luke’s parables seem more grace-oriented than Matthew, projecting the softer side of Jesus. That noted, we move into the next couple of weeks listening to Jesus through the words of the author of Luke’s Gospel.

These stories have a bit of a different slant than the other gospel writers. For one thing, Luke is a gentile and he sees things differently than his Jewish gospel cohorts. And another thing to note is that Luke is a physician, one whose calling requires paying attention. Thus, the perspectives from Luke are a bit different. For instance, he places most of Jesus’ parables as responses to criticisms he has received — primarily criticisms about the people with whom he dined. And what is more than a bit unsettling to me is that these stories are, by and large, directed at the more religious people, people like you and me.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.” Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “speak.” “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
–Luke 7:36-50

There’s a lot of talk these days about small business loans. The basic idea is to assist small businesses by loaning them enough money to keep solvent during these days of the pandemic, and that these loans will be forgiven if the businesses use the money to keep their employees on the payroll. There are lots of discussions about who qualifies for such a loan (e.g. The Los Angeles Lakers were approved for a loan, and they pay two of their players over 20 million dollars a year to play basketball! When called to task, they gave the money back.) Today’s parable speaks to the topic of creditors and debtors, words much on our minds in this day and time, but the deeper topic is forgiveness, one which, if we admit it, is every bit as pertinent in this time of intense emotion and heightened debate about right versus wrong.

The parable is told in the midst of a dinner given in honor of Jesus by a Pharisee by the name of Simon. We should not be surprised that Jesus is eating with a Pharisee. Luke’s Gospel reveals Jesus doing that at other times (e.g. 11^th & 14^th chapters). Furthermore, if Jesus refused to eat with Pharisees, wouldn’t he have been committing a reverse discrimination?

Simon’s home and a brief description of the dinner might be of interest here. Houses of well-to-do people in that culture were built around an open courtyard in the form of a hollow square. Often in the courtyard there was a fountain and a garden where meals were taken during warm weather. It was the custom in that culture when a rabbi was at a meal in a house, all kinds of people came in or sat at the gate in order to listen to the pearls of wisdom that fell from the rabbi’s lips. Another custom that will help us better understand this story was that when a guest entered a house three things were always done: (1) The host placed his hand on the guest’s shoulder and gave him the kiss of peace. This was nearly always done, but most certainly would have been done upon a rabbi’s visit. (2) Because the roads were dusty and sandals were the shoes of the day, cool water was poured over the guest’s feet and wiped clean by a servant. (3) Either a pinch of sweet-smelling incense was burned, or a drop of attar of roses was placed on the guest’s head. All of these three things were required etiquette by any sophisticated person, none of which were done to Jesus.

In addition, in the Middle East, the guests did not sit at the table, but reclined. The table was low, and guests rested on their left elbows and ate with their right hands, all with their feet stretched out behind. This would explain why the woman would have been at Jesus’ feet. She comes in and lets her hair down, which would have been considered an erotic act in that culture (…and even today in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern locales), one that would have been seen as scandalous to those in the room. Jesus wouldn’t have had to have been a mind-reader to pick up the disdain of Simon and his friends. It is in this setting that Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors, a parable that has about it justice and mercy.

When Jesus finishes the parable, the artistic Luke makes a literary pivot that is so descriptive. He has Jesus turning to the woman while at the same time speaking to Simon, and the turn is more than physical. He turns the attention to the concern of forgiveness by comparing the woman’s sins to the question of Simon’s sins. Jesus points out that what the woman has done is essentially what Simon should have done. Instead of rushing to convict her of her sins of commission, Jesus turns to Simon’s sins of omission. But less we miss the point here and think that this story is one of proper protocol or appropriate manners, Jesus staggers all in that room with his words to the woman: “I forgive you your sins. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” That line from Jesus must have sucked the wind right out of that room. Pharisees at every place at the table probably said, “Did he just say, what I think he said? Who in the world does he think he is?” They didn’t know, but the woman did. The woman’s faith was displayed in her coming to Jesus. She saw in Jesus something that Simon, for all his religion, couldn’t see. Jesus came to invite the lost to be found.

Luke’s Jesus is much like the Brazilian mother that Max Lucado describes. Her small house was simple but adequate. It consisted of one large room on a dusty street. Its red-tiled roof was one of many in this poor neighborhood on the outskirts of a Brazilian village. It was a comfortable home. Maria and her daughter, Christina, had done what they could to add color to the gray walls and warmth to the hard dirt floor: there was an old calendar, a faded photograph of a relative, a wooden crucifix. The furnishings were modest: a pallet on either side of the room, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove. Maria’s husband had died when Christina was an infant. The young mother, stubbornly refusing opportunities to remarry, got a job and set out to raise her young daughter. Now, fifteen years later, the worst years were over. Though Maria’s salary as a maid afforded few luxuries, it was reliable and it did provide food and clothes. And now Christina was old enough to help out.

Some said Christina got her independence from her mother. She recoiled at the traditional idea of marrying young and raising a family. Not that she couldn’t have had her pick of husbands. Her olive skin and brown eyes kept a steady stream of prospects at her back door. She had an infectious way of throwing her head back and filling a room with laughter. She also had that rare magic some women have that makes every man feel like a king just by being near them. But it was her spirited independence that made her keep them at arm’s length. She spoke often of going to the city. She dreamed of trading her dusty neighborhood for exciting avenues and city life. However, the mere thought of this horrified her mother. And Maria was always quick to remind Christina of the harshness of the streets. “People don’t know you there. Jobs are scarce and life is cruel. And besides, if you went there, what would you do for a living?”

Maria knew exactly what Christina would do, or have to do for a living. That’s why her heart broke when she awoke one morning to find Christina’s bed empty. Maria knew immediately where her daughter had gone. She also knew immediately what she must do to find her. She quickly threw some clothes in a bag, gathered up all her money, and ran out of the house. On her way to the bus stop she entered the drugstore to get one last thing . . . Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.

Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for streetwalkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture – taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note. It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.

It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs that morning, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation: “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” And Christina did.

Being the helpless, hapless romantic, I love that story. And I love Jesus’ stories about forgiveness – prodigals, Zacchaeuses, little lost sheep. But what becomes a bit more difficult is to realize that Jesus wants us to be like him, and that means “forgiving.” And that reality confronts the Simon in me. Perhaps Frederick Buechner’s words will nudge me to a fuller understanding: To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.” To accept forgiveness means to admit that you’ve done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride. When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other’s presence.

Turning to the woman, Jesus says to me . . .

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

Can you remember a time when you were in the wrong and you’ve been genuinely forgiven? How did that make you feel? Thank God for the lesson shared and learned.
Have you ever been able to truly forgive someone who caused you pain or hardship? How did that make you feel about the other person? Yourself?
Is there anything that stands between you and God? How might prayer help you know that that barrier is of your own construction, not God’s?

Two Artistic Guides for Prayer:

John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Forgiveness”

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

Thoughts from Don Henley’s “The Heart of the Matter”

These times are so uncertain
There’s a yearning undefined
People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age?
Ah, the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They’re the very things we kill, I guess

And the more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I’d figured out
I have to learn again
I’ve been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But everything changes
And my friends seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness

There are people in your life
Who’ve come and gone
They let you down
You know they’ve hurt your pride
You better put it all behind you baby
‘Cause life goes on
You keep carryin’ that anger
It’ll eat you up inside baby
I’ve been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness

The Parables and The Pandemic: A man on a journey entrusted his property to his slaves

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsWednesday, April 290

The Sower, Vincent van Gogh
Copyright: www.bridgemanart.com
Original: https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-the-sower

Wednesday, April 29th

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
–Matthew 25: 14-30

Who would have ever thought that going to the grocery store could be a risky business? It was never on my list of perilous things to avoid. But you listen to the reports, that the best preventive measures we have are social distancing, staying at least six feet away from other folks and wearing a mask. So, all of a sudden, grocery shopping has become a bit precarious. After all, those aisles aren’t all that wide. And when there is a cough in one part of the store, all other parts cringe a bit. Risk has become a given in our daily lives in ways we never imagined a few months ago, which makes today’s parable seem all the more pertinent. Jesus seems to say that faith, too, is a risky business.

I think a bit of exegetical work helps give added meaning to this parable. First of all, there is the word talent. In our day and time, the definition of a talent is one’s natural ability, their personal proficiency, if you will. However, in Jesus’ day, a talent was a financial measurement. To get some idea of that, a talent in those days was the greatest unit of accounting in Greek money — about 10,000 denarii. And if you remember from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, a denarius was a fair day’s wage. Therefore, if you multiply this by 10,000, according to some sources, you would have had the equivalent of nearly fifteen years of wages. So, translating this parable into the 21^st century, it might sound like this: “A man, before going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them. To one, he gave two-and-a-half million dollars. To another, he gave one million dollars. And to a third, he gave five hundred thousand dollars.” This restatement of value makes a dramatic difference. We quickly see that when the master gives the slaves five talents or two talents or even just one talent, the master is actually being extremely generous with his money. It’s another example of Jesus’ use of hyperbole, and it must have turned the heads of his listeners, because he was talking about a very generous man entrusting exorbitant funds.

What this seems to spotlight is the character of the master. Here was one who was generous to the nth degree. The first two of his slaves seem to pick up on this largesse of heart and confidence. The third man didn’t at all. In fact, he saw his master as one who was “harsh, reaping where he did not sow.” What’s more, it would seem that the master is much more impressed with the servants who risk. It’s a billboard statement of risk versus reward. God, as Jesus sees it, loves risky disciples. Consequently, reading the parable, or more aptly put, letting the parable read me, I am called to consider how much I have actually risked for the sake of the Gospel. It’s an uncomfortable consideration. For many, being a Christian these days has become more about being proper, nice. Jesus seems to suggest otherwise. Jesus calls us to risky lives of faith.

Donald Miller is one of the relatively new writers who has emerged on the Christian scene. He is bright, insightful and more than a bit edgy. He tells about a college experience when he was a student at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a decidedly secular place that the Princeton Review once dubbed as “the college where students are most likely to ignore God.” Miller shares an unlikely event that introduced him to the radical mystery of grace. Each year Reed College has a renaissance-themed festival called Ren Fayre, which has basically become an excuse for the students to have a Bacchian orgy where they can ‘party-hearty.’ The school closes down the campus for the event and brings in special units to deal with the inebriated and drugged students.

Miller states that some of the Christian students in his little group decided this would be a good place to, in his words, “come out of the closet,” and let everybody know there were a few Christians on campus. He and his friend, Tony the Beat Poet, were sitting around in his room one afternoon talking about what to do, how to explain who they were to a group of students who, in the past, had expressed hostility toward Christians. Tongue-in-cheek, Miller suggested that they should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said “Confess your sins.” Laughing, Miller said he knew a lot of people would be sinning, and Christian spirituality begins by confessing our sins and repenting. However, Miller said it as a joke.

But Tony thought it was brilliant. He sat on Miller’s couch with his mind in the clouds, scaring Miller to death, because he was actually considering it. “Tony,” Miller said very gently. “What?” he said, with a blank stare at the opposite wall. “We are not going to do this.” Tony moved his gaze down the wall. A smile came across his face. “Oh, we are, Don. We certainly are. We are going to build a confession booth!”

Tony got their little Christian group together and announced that Miller had an idea. They looked at Don. He told them that Tony was lying and he didn’t have an idea at all. They looked at Tony, who gave Miller a dirty look and told him to tell them the idea. Miller sighed and then told them that he had a stupid idea, one they couldn’t actually act upon without getting attacked. The others suddenly leaned in. He went on to say that his idea was to build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said “Confess your sins.” A girl named Penny put her hands over her mouth. Another girl, Nadine, smiled. Ivan laughed out loud. All the while, another guy by the name of Mitch started drawing designs for the booth on a napkin. Tony nodded his head. Miller couldn’t believe it.

“They may very well burn it down,” Nadine said. “I will build a trapdoor,” Mitch said with his finger in the air. “I like it, Don.” Ivan patted Don on the back. “I don’t want anything to do with it,” Penny said. “Neither do I,” Miller told her. “Okay, you guys.” Tony gathered everybody’s attention. “Here’s the catch.” He leaned in a little. “We are not actually going to accept confessions.” They all looked at him in confusion. He continued, “We are going to confess to them ourselves. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades; we will apologize for televangelists; we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely; we will ask them to forgive us; and we will tell them that in our selfishness we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.”

All of the group sat there in silence, because it was obvious that something beautiful and true had hit the table with a thud. They all thought it was a great idea and could see it in each other’s eyes. It would feel so good to apologize, to apologize for the Crusades, for Columbus and the genocide committed in the Bahamas in the name of God, apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the West slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ. Miller said that he wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways he had misrepresented the Lord. He said, “I could feel that I had betrayed the Lord by judging, by not being willing to love the people he had loved and only giving lip service to issues of human rights. For so much of my life I have been defending Christianity, because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole. But it isn’t a religious system; it is people following Christ. And the important thing to do, the right thing to do, is to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.”

They built the booth, almost like a shed, complete with a slanted roof and two small sections inside, one for the person confessing and the other for the one hearing it. They built a half-high wall between the two rooms and installed a curtain so the confessor could easily get in and out. Nadine painted “Confession Booth” in large letters on the outside. . .

Miller tells about the night of the party. There was a lot of drinking and loud music, people running and screaming. Miller and the group lit Tiki torches and mounted them in the ground just outside the booth; and they said that because it was Miller’s idea, he should be the first one in the booth. Miller said that he didn’t want to go first, but he played bold and got in the booth. He could hear all the commotion going on outside and imagined the bohemian activities taking place. As he did, he thought, Nobody is going to confess anything. Who wants to stop dancing to confess their sins? Then he began to think that this was a bad idea, that none of this was God’s idea. Nobody was going to get angry, but nobody was going to care very much either, he thought to himself. He was about to give up when the curtain got pulled back. “What’s up, man?” Miller tendered as the fellow student sat himself on the chair with a smile on his face.

He told Miller that his pipe smelled good. “Thanks,” Miller said, and then asked his name. He said his name was Jake. They shook hands because Miller didn’t know what else to do. “So, what is this?” Jake began, “I’m supposed to tell you all of the juicy gossip of what I did at Ren Fayre, right?” “No.” “Okay, then what? What’s the game?” he asked. “Not really a game. More of a confession thing.” “You want me to confess my sins, right?” “No, that’s not what we’re doing.” “What’s the deal, man? What’s with the monk outfit?” “Well, we are, well, a group of Christians here on campus, you know.” “I see. Strange place for Christians, but I’m listening.” “Thanks,” Miller said. “Anyway, there is this group, just a few of us who were thinking about the way Christians have sort of wronged people over time. You know, the Crusades, all that stuff …” “Well, I doubt you personally were involved in any of that, man.” “No, I wasn’t,” Miller told him. “But the thing is, we are followers of Jesus. We believe that he is God and all, and he represented certain ideas that we have sort of not done a good job at representing. He has asked us to represent him well, but it can be very hard.” “I see,” Jake said. “So this group of us on campus wanted to confess to you.” “You are confessing to me?” Jake said with a laugh. “Yeah. We are confessing to you. I mean, I am confessing to you,” Miller stammered. “You’re serious,” Jake said as his laugh turned to something of a straight face.

“There’s a lot. I will keep it short,” Miller started. “Jesus said to feed the poor and to heal the sick. I have never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me. I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, you know, if my ego gets threatened. Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics. I grew up doing that. It got in the way of the central message of Christ. I know that was wrong, and I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across. There’s a lot more, you know.”

“It’s all right, man,” Jake said, very tenderly. His eyes were starting to water. “Well,” Miller said, clearing his throat, “I am sorry for all that.” “I forgive you,” Jake said. And he meant it. “Thanks,” Miller replied. He sat there and looked at the floor, then into the fire of a candle. “It’s really cool what you guys are doing,” he said. “A lot of people need to hear this.”… “This is cool what you guys are doing,” he repeated. “I am going to tell my friends about this.” “I don’t know whether to thank you for that or not,” Miller laughed. “I have to sit here and confess all my sins over and over again.” Jake looked at Miller very seriously. “It’s worth it,” he said. He shook Don’s hand, and when he left the booth there was somebody else ready to get in.

It went like that for a couple of hours. Miller talked to about thirty people, and Tony took confessions on a picnic table outside the booth. Many people wanted to hug when they were done. All of the people who visited the booth were grateful and gracious. Miller said that he himself became changed through the process. He said that he went in with doubts and came out believing so strongly in Jesus that he was ready to die and be with him. Miller concludes his remembrances of that evening: “I think that night was the beginning of a change for a lot of us.”

The call to follow Christ is always a call to risk something. It nudges us out of our comfort zones toward the Kingdom of Heaven. The question for us today is: “Are we willing to take such a risk?”

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

Take time to consider those who are taking risks to serve others during this pandemic. Lift them up to God.
Can you bring to mind a specific occasion when someone took a risk for your good? Thank God for that; thank God for them.
What calls for a risk of faith in your own life? In our church?

A Poetical Guide for Prayer: Anaïs Nin’s “Risk”

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

The Parables and Pandemic: How many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?

Lisa ShinkinsDaily DevotionsThursday, April 231

Thursday, April 23^rd

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

— Matthew 18:21-35

One of the things I’ve noticed about this strange time in which we find ourselves is the plethora of instructions we need to master. The assortment of these precepts is mind-boggling – there are guides for avoiding the virus (social distancing, hand washing, immunity-building, etc.); there are guides on what to do if you think you might have the virus (testing, breathing exercises, hydrating, etc.); there are guides on what to eat, how to spend your time, as well as how to stay fit, and so many other things. It’s almost as if we need a universal guidebook to mentor us through this demanding experience.

I think the author of Matthew’s gospel sensed a similar need for the people in his congregation. After the ascension of Jesus, the church was forming in what had to be vacillating ways. So much so, that this author began to pull the life and teachings of Jesus together in catechismic fashion, organizing things in succinct order for memorization and implementation. A good example of this is the Sermon on the Mount, but there is also that collection of parables that he has pulled together in what is now known as the 13^th chapter of his gospel. However, that list of parables was nowhere near complete, and the rest of Matthew is seasoned with parables to illustrate Jesus’ teaching and preaching. Such is the parable for today.

This parable comes as a result of an interesting exchange between Simon Peter and Jesus. Simon Peter asks how much forgiveness one person is required to give. He employs the rabbinic formula that states that we are required to forgive three times. Simon Peter, in his customary blustery manner, doubles that number and adds one more for good measure, going well beyond the norm.

Jesus’ response is telling in many ways. For one thing, Jesus talks about forgiveness as if it were a process, a continual effort, almost in an appendage to his exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount to keep on seeking, asking and knocking. Secondly, the parable is vintage Jesus hyperbole, an outlandish story involving a debt of ten thousand talents owed to a king by a slave. You may remember that a talent is equivalent to fifteen years’ worth of daily wages, so the amount owed to the king is gargantuan. In contrast, the debt owed to the slave by a fellow slave is 100 denarii, minuscule in comparison. The hearers of this parable would have been amused and incensed by the unfairness of it all, and then startled to realize that forgiveness isn’t dictated by law, but by spirit. It is an example of Jesus’ petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us as we forgive.”

Forgiveness is a spiritual discipline, sure enough. It’s also good therapy. Scott Peck, long before he became a follower of Jesus, wrote in his enormously popular book, The Road Less Traveled, “The process of forgiveness – indeed the chief reason for forgiveness – is selfish. The reason to forgive others is not for their sake . . .The reason for forgiveness is for our own sake. For our own health. Because beyond that point needed for healing, if we hold on to our anger, we stop growing and our souls begin to shrivel.” Rabbi Levi Meir, a Jungian psychologist and counselor, said something to the effect that unresolved anger is like psychic cholesterol that will ultimately kill you. However, I would submit to you that forgiveness is not just a therapeutic tool; it is a spiritual necessity. Forgiveness is the remarkable ability to look into the heart of God and realize the ultimate significance of all that we say and do.

On this day we come not only with a sense of needing forgiveness, but also with the realization that we need to grant forgiveness. An Ernest Hemingway short story tells about a remorseful father who published an advertisement in the Madrid newspaper, “Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana noon Thursday. All is forgiven…Papa.” Because Paco is such a common name in Spain, the next day 800 young men showed up. Pause for a moment to consider the pathos of that story and the often unrecognized need for forgiveness, granted and received, in our lives.

You probably know the story of English clergyman John Newton who authored some great hymns, including “Amazing Grace.” He was a prolific hymnist, writing over 280 hymns during his lifetime, but before his spiritual conversion Newton participated for years in the cruel African slave trade. When he penned the phrase a “wretch like me,” he wasn’t just using poetic hyperbole. He was a wretched offender in the worst sort of way. However, in his conversion, when he was confronted with Christ, he transformed into a symbol of the amazing grace of God, becoming a pastor and an ardent abolitionist. Can you sense the irony here? A hymn from the heart of a former slave trader has become beloved by scores of African-American congregations, even serving as an inspirational anthem for the American civil rights movement. And here is one more irony… While Newton wrote the words, we don’t know who wrote the tune. Some have surmised, with some justification, that it is probable that the tune evolved from the oral tradition of African folk music. All of this is because one man was confronted for the greater good, the great grace of Jesus Christ.

And the good doesn’t end there… You see, we, too, participate in this parable of Jesus. He has revealed to us an amazing grace, sure enough. Now, all Jesus asks is that we emulate him and grant such grace to others. Can we do that? It is a defining question for us, individually and collectively. May God help us to answer affirmatively.

A Time of Reflection and Prayer

E. Claiborne Jones tells about a man who had been on the outs with the church since he was a teenager. Finally, after his family had pleaded with him to go to church again, he reluctantly agreed. He wandered into an Episcopal Church during the middle of the service where the congregation was on its knees praying the Prayer of Confession: “We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done . . .” The man broke into a smile and said to his family, “Good! Sounds just like my kind of crowd.” Today, let us pray for forgiveness.

Is there something in your life that needs forgiveness?
Is there someone in your life who needs forgiveness?
Is there an issue related to a past wrong that keeps on stirring your resentment? Can you continue the process of forgiveness, seventy times seven?

A Musical Guide for Prayer: Written by Gordon Sumner, performed by Sting

Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding all through the night
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the field’s I’d known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle
That I’d invented inside my head
Away so long for years and years
You probably thought or even wished that I was dead
While the armies are all sleeping
Beneath the tattered flag we’d made
I had to stop in my track for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields where I’d once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

We are a people of Hope, seeking to proclaim the love of Christ.

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How old was David when he wrote this?

Does the Psalm speak to you in some way that brings moments to mind?

Are there painful moments where you know your own mistakes and sins have created rifts between you, God and others, and for which you have not repented?

Have you, like David, acknowledged both your own sin and God’s sovereignty?

Monday, June 1st By Conrad Navarro

Dear younger me Where do I start If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far Then you could be One step ahead Of all the painful memories still running thru my head I wonder how much different things would be Dear younger me, dear younger me

Years ago J.B. Phillips wrote a most interesting book, Your God Is Too Small. Take some time today to consider the grandeur of God. Imagine looking at this world as a scientist might, through a microscope or telescope, and see that there is more than meets the human eye or comprehension.

Paul used a hymn to speak to the hearts of his listeners. Music is such a force in our memories, thoughts and emotions. Can you call to mind a hymn, song, or chorus that is meaningful to you? Sing it as a prayer and as a way for God to speak to you.

Monday, May 18th

Life is continual formation. Many elements are transformative — relationships, a sense of passion/purpose, learning, spirituality/prayer, joy, suffering, healing or lack of healing… Can you identify the things forming your life right now?

Is there something — physical, emotional, psychic, spiritual — in your life that needs healing? Ask God for awareness, strength, and courage to address that need.

As a people we are enduring an intense time of change, individually and collectively. Who are we now called to be? How can God’s grace and love guide our formative process?

A Poetic Guide for Prayer: William E. Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

Take time to think about your parents and/or parent-figures in your life. Consider how your perspective of them changed over the years as you grew to see them as human beings with both gifts and challenges. Thank God for them.

Take time to think about the children in your life, or perhaps the children in our church. How might they learn of God’s love from you?

How might we as a congregation articulate and share the prodigal love of God?

Can you remember a time when you were in the wrong and you’ve been genuinely forgiven? How did that make you feel? Thank God for the lesson shared and learned.

Have you ever been able to truly forgive someone who caused you pain or hardship? How did that make you feel about the other person? Yourself?

Is there anything that stands between you and God? How might prayer help you know that that barrier is of your own construction, not God’s?

Take time to consider those who are taking risks to serve others during this pandemic. Lift them up to God.

Can you bring to mind a specific occasion when someone took a risk for your good? Thank God for that; thank God for them.

What calls for a risk of faith in your own life? In our church?

A Poetical Guide for Prayer: Anaïs Nin’s “Risk” And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to Blossom.

Coffee fellowship time is from 8:30-10:00 AM in The Atrium, between the Youth Center and Music Suite
9:00 AM - Worship in Maresh Fellowship Hall
9:50 AM - Sunday School for all ages
11:00 AM - Worship in the Sanctuary

Monday, June 1^st
By Conrad Navarro

Dear younger me
Where do I start
If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far
Then you could be
One step ahead
Of all the painful memories still running thru my head
I wonder how much different things would be
Dear younger me, dear younger me

Monday, May 18^th

A Poetical Guide for Prayer: Anaïs Nin’s “Risk”

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.