AM Psalm 148, 149, 150;
PM Psalm 114, 115
Isa. 43:14-44:5
Heb. 6:17-7:10
In our Gospel reading today, we find Jesus speaking to a woman–and a Samaritan one at that. We also discover it’s the Samaritan woman’s testimony that leads more Samaritans to follow Jesus. Why? Because she actually met him. Meeting Jesus changed her opinion of what was probably kicked around at the Samaritan dinner table as “those Jews.” I suspect the Samaritan woman couldn’t talk about “those Jews” anymore, and from what she was telling her friends, it was another story entirely.
Isn’t it something how actually meeting one of “them” changes the character of “them?”
With that in mind, I created a video for our diocese that puts faces and places to what are too often just words on our diocesan prayer list in the Diocese of Missouri. We have a partnership with the Diocese of Lui, South Sudan. Many of you know that there is a great deal of tension between ECUSA and the Episcopal Church of Sudan. Yet, for roughly a decade, our diocese has had a working partnership with Lui along with our partners in Blackmore Vale, U.K., and Lund, Sweden. There’s something wonderfully mysterious about what changes when people meet each other because of a shared Anglican heritage, a shared baptism, and a shared prayer life. I can’t even begin to know what will ever ultimately come of our relationship in light of the tension between the two churches, but I know I am grateful to share my prayer life with these folks and to have met them on my recent mission trip.
That said, I invite you to pray with all of us in Missouri, Blackmore Vale, Lund, and Lui through this video.
Praying for Lui from Episcopal Diocese of Missouri on Vimeo.
Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid. Dr. Evans recently returned from a mission trip from the Diocese of Missouri to the Episcopal Diocese of Lui, South Sudan. http://luinetwork.diocesemo.org