Category: Speaking to the Soul

“Jesus is not our accuser, but our advocate and intercessor. And within this reading, we see a description of the working of the Trinity: the Spirit helps us to pray when we are overcome; God the Creator is for us when all else seems to be arrayed against us and everything seems to be conspiring to break our spirits; the Son, Jesus Christ, has died for us and intercedes for us when we cannot intercede for ourselves.”

“As I watched the children, my mind drifted to Jesus, and how he might have played as a child. How little we know about his world prior to the age of 30. And yet, this Son of God, Son of Man, this child of heaven, I am certain on lazy summer days would have jumped into sprays of water, or pulled buckets from wells to toss water onto the head of his cousin John, or splashed in the shallows of the Sea of Galilee with his siblings. Do I hear Joseph, do I see Mary, at first telling the boys to slow down? To be careful? Not to disturb the others at the well, the women and men fishing the Sea? Relenting, and laughing, now they start splashing water at Jesus rather than chide him.”

I hear you calling to me – come and rest.
I hear you speaking my name – you are my beloved.
I hear you welcoming me – “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.” (Mt. 11: 28, NIV)

“2020 is only half over. COVID cases are on the rise. People are edgy. Many are out of work. The schools and churches aren’t safe. And the great sin of systemic racism has hardly been touched. We have a lot that can put us to sleep out of fear and exhaustion. Or drive us to self-willed quick fixes. The only fix that will work is through Jesus in the Garden, submitting to his Father to bring the possibility of the Kingdom of God here on earth. And for that we have to stay awake, pray, and listen to the voice of God in our hearts.”

“Parables are like onions, replete with layer upon layer of meaning.  Was Matthew wrong, or is there some other way of understanding?  Human judgment is itself the devil’s child, the strangling weed that wraps around all our good grain.  How will it happen that we slip out of either-or thinking into a new reality?  When we do that, what gets burned away?  The “end of the age” may be a time of accounting that has nothing to do with space and time in the natural world, and it may not happen for everybody at the same point and in the same way.”

I can see what frustrated the prophets of old who could, with the help of God,  clearly see what was happening yet were seemingly unable to make the people see it too, much less change their ways. 

“That certain guy clearly was a follower of Jesus; otherwise he wouldn’t be part of the story.  Was he an innkeeper (that might have given him a tiny bit of a social pass to be toting a water jug around), well known in the community…or was he “just a guy,” a nobody on the streets of Jerusalem, blending in with the crowd, letting Jesus use an unused room at his house?”

“Especially now, in this time and place, many people are wondering where God is, as people have wondered throughout all great crises and tumults. Jacob’s prayer and encounter with God during the night reminds us that God is ever-present, even in the darkness, even when we are afraid or feel loneliness in our journey through life. God promises to be with us always.”

“Wherever you find this note, I hope it gives you the encouragement to take a deep breath and  look and see the beauty in front of you. Jesus used such ordinary items – bread, wine, water – and transformed them into an abundance of grace. He’s still at work changing the simple moments in our lives into extraordinary encounters with the divine.”