Category: Speaking to the Soul

“Thinking about the bumper sticker, America truly needs prayer these days.  Instead of becoming more polarized, the citizens of this nation need to come together to help one another through the tough times we encounter every day. Fires, floods, heat, sickness, death, homelessness, violence, supremacy, divisiveness, fear, and anxiety are situations affecting millions every day, and, whether specifically called out by those names in the Prayer Book or even the Bible, Jesus encouraged us to pray and to love our neighbor, which sums it all up rather nicely. It’s impossible to wish ill on your neighbor and love them at the same time. So perhaps in addition to prayers for the nation and its leaders, victims, and situations of peril, we should pray for our country and its problems.”

“We often talk about someone having “the patience of Job,” but as we see in our first reading today, Job was anything BUT patient in laying out the case for his innocence to the Almighty.”

“Today is the pause before the plunge that sweeps over those who remember and mourn. I wonder about how we honor the memory of those who gave their lives for others, and how we remember the messages of love as well as the images of destruction from that day.”

“The Gospel appointed for today is John 12:24–28, where Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Clearly, the martyrs we commemorate today were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice as they followed Jesus.”

“Give us courage in the face of adversity.
Give us peace in the eye of a storm.
Give us strength for the road ahead.”

“Do we not now live out Job’s life? The national situation is horrendous. What started out as a cry for the end to systemic racism is rapidly turning into a race war, and dozens of identity wars. We need to pray that our mouths be filled with the Spirit so that we can proclaim, not in arrogance, but with authority, God’s Truth. But right now we feel like Job. But we are also Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, insisting on our own wisdom in our ignorance, and, in doing so, distracting from the only true Wisdom, that of God. We need to make our confession, but not a breast-beating act of showmanship, but humble in the wonder and grace of God. As did Job.”

“Rather there’s a spiritual wakefulness that anchors us to a deeper belonging.  Having awakened I need to wake up again, from ordinary consciousness into an awareness of my union with God.  At this next level I feel the peace that passes understanding.  I am not any less passionate nor any less aware of my obligations.  But I realize that in duty and anguish I am doing what I was born to do, learning what I was created to learn.  God breathes the tainted air with me and helps me feel the greatest connection, the one that runs from God’s self through every single one of us.”

“As much trouble as we have realizing that the writers of the Bible lived and wrote in very different times and cultures, we can’t assume that our understanding is the right one until we have checked to see what the first hearers would have heard and comprehended.  Things that the people at the sermon on the mount understood would be very different today.”

“What good news do I hear? That new life emerges and blossoms, even as disaster looms. That we all are growing, no matter the circumstances; that we long for Christ’s message as my orchid longed for sunlight. That beginnings and endings come and go; this time of virus and violence and blindness and paralysis will end. You yourself are meant to be here now; you who have heard and believed the message, you are called and sent forth to sing a new song in a waning age, in the dawn of an emerging reality.”

“This is a pretty hard thing Jesus is calling and modeling for us to do: to not treat people as disposable even if they seem to deserve it. Too much of our society is eager to write people off based on snap judgments, even based on appearances, while not even making a token attempt to get to know people who are different from us. It’s much easier to make assumptions, judge harshly, even mock, and then cut people off as having no claim upon us at all.”