Exactly
May 20, 2020
Written by Quinn Caldwell
The LORD leads me beside still waters;
they restore my soul.
They lead me in right paths
for their name’s sake.
- Psalm 23:1-3 (NRSV, adapted)
My son and I hike along, looking for the next flash of colour. Those who knew the way through this forest have gone ahead of us, painting blue blazes on the trees to lead us in right paths.
I think of the ancestors who set aside this state forest, the ones who blazed the trail. What did they think we’d be using this for? Did they know that one day we’d be out here because we had nowhere else to go except the living room? That we’d be walking their path in search of virus-free air?
What about the ones who built the local library? What would they say if they knew the building was closed, the books inaccessible ... but that the library was going strong, doing a rip-roaring business restoring people’s souls with books downloaded from the sky?
How about the founders of your church? What would they say about the still living waters God and your pastors are pouring through your screen each week despite the shuttered sanctuary? Would they recognize you as their church, worshiping there in your jammies in the living room?
Maybe hiking in the woods to escape lockdown isn’t what the sylvan ancestors envisioned. Maybe accessing your library on your phone isn’t what the bookish ancestors planned for. Maybe church on the computer isn’t the kind of thing the charter ancestors would have wanted.
Or maybe it is, exactly.
Prayer
For the gifts of the ancestors, for the paths they blazed and the institutions they started, and for your Spirit, showing us new ways and purposes for using them, thank you. Amen.
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The Power of Patience
May 19, 2020
Written by marchae grair
Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. - James 5:7 (NIV)
“No mom. I can do it.”
Of course I knew it all at five. After relentlessly telling my mom I didn’t need her help brushing my teeth, she finally gave in. It took approximately 2.5 seconds for me to drop a huge glob of toothpaste on my new dress.
It was picture day, and she sent me to school with a smiling face and a huge white stain in the centre of my chest.
My first school picture is my favourite school picture because it was my first real lesson in the wisdom of patience.
There are so many times I’ve looked at God’s presence in my life like I looked at my mother’s hand that day. I want God to just hand over my problems and let me figure out a solution. So many of us share the kryptonite of the “just let me do it” spirit.
In God’s Divine wisdom, perhaps She knows we need reminders to slow down and wait.
James told the early Church that there is reaping in the waiting. He explains farmers must spend just as much time planting as they do waiting – and both are equally important to the process of growth.
Maybe it’s time we slow down and let God have our toothbrush.
We might just hear a Word from on high. We might realize we should go left instead of right.
We might just realize how much wisdom can be found in the waiting.
Prayer
Dear God, in a world that doesn't stop moving, help me find peace in showing patience. Amen.
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The Same Boat
May 18, 2020
Written by Vince Amlin
The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners … but the centurion ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, and the rest to follow, some on planks and others on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land. - Acts 27:42-44, excerpted (NRSV)
Some say we’re all in the same boat during this pandemic. But as this story from Acts shows, even people in the same boat aren’t in the same boat.
Some can swim; some can’t. Some have decision-making power; some don’t. Some have just been saved from death; others are still heading to their executions. Not the same boat.
When I pray with members of my congregations who still have to leave their homes every day to do work that is unsafe, I know we’re not in the same boat.
When I hear my friends Kaji and Donna describe ministry in New York City, where, as I write, almost 1 in 400 people has died, I know we’re not in the same boat.
When I see that black citizens of Chicago are dying at 6-times the rate of whites, I know.
We are not even in the same storm.
Paul himself offers a different model of solidarity. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
Rather than claiming we’re in the same boat, the gospel tells me to find out about my neighbour’s boat. Seek to understand their experience of this storm. And listen when they tell me what I can never understand.
It prompts me to ask how we ended up in such different boats. And do something about it. And not stop until everyone is brought safely to land.
Prayer
Bring us all safely to land.
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At the Cross
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May 17, 2020
Written by Mary Luti
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. - John 19:25 (NRSV)
Most COVID-19 deaths haven’t been good deaths in that way we hope death will be: comforted by family, eased by sedatives, soft music playing in the room. They’ve been isolated in ICUs, stacked in chaotic corridors, hidden in nursing homes where no one noticed for days.
This isn’t to say that doctors and nurses haven’t been heroic, risking their own lives to render beautiful care. It’s only to say that what’s come upon us is a genuine horror.
Most of us don’t work in overwhelmed hospitals and makeshift morgues. We’re not digging anonymous graves. We’re shielded from these awful scenes.
And why would we want to dwell on them, anyway? Aren’t we an Easter people? Don’t we specialize in hope, in divine silver linings, in life in the midst of death?
Yes, and we’re right always to insist on hope. But maybe not so reflexively, maybe not so fast. For there are times when we’d do better to stay longer at the cross, to stand still there absorbing the pain for a while before we proclaim the Easter joy.
Faith isn’t faith if it marches us straight to glory without passing despair. If it notices the statistics but not the deaths. If it gets Jesus off the cross and into glory with unseemly haste. Our piety must never separate us from our humanity. If we are too quick to say, “All will be well,” we make faith incredible.
Christians live in the midst of two realities – unrelenting pain and a joy no circumstance can alter. Faith never evades that pain to proclaim that joy.
Prayer
Jesus, keep us near your cross, even as we announce in hope the death of death in your glorious resurrection.
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It’s Going to Be Bad
May 16, 2020
Written by Rachel Hackenberg
“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away.’ … I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” – John 14:27b-29 (NRSV)
It’s the speech that I call The Great Assurance – Jesus’ efforts to prepare, to steady, and to comfort those closest to him before the you-know-what hits the fan.
“You have heard me say, ‘It’s going to be bad.’ I’m telling you again – it’s going to be bad – so that when the bad begins and when the bad overwhelms you, you’ll be prepared to hold on to love and remember that you’re not alone.”
Infectious disease experts are telling us that the bad will be with us for many months.
Climate scientists are telling us that the bad will be impacting human behavior for decades to come.
Psychologists are telling us that the bad could have generational consequences.
Genocide scholars and anti-racism activists are telling us that the bad will keep rearing its evil head, day after day.
“I’m telling you, ‘It’s going to be bad,’ so that you’ll be prepared to hold on to love and remember that you’re not alone. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Friends, it’s bad these days – for a lot of reasons. Many of us feel unprepared. Instability is on public display when we most need steadiness. Comfort seems to be practicing social distancing.
Keep holding on to love.
Remember that you’re not alone.
Keep holding on to love.
Remember that you’re not alone.
Prayer
It’s bad, Jesus. It’s really bad, and the end isn’t in sight. Let there be love, for the living of each day. Let there be solidarity, for the perseverance of healing.
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Wait…How Long?
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May 15, 2020
Written by John Edgerton
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. - Genesis 7:11-12 (NIV)
Forty days is a good, solid, biblical number. It signifies completeness, totality. It is time fulfilled. For it to rain for forty days means it well and truly rained for as long as one could imagine.
But here’s the part of the story that I forgot from Sunday School: exactly how long Noah and his family had to stay in the ark. Hint: it’s a lot longer than 40 days.
“And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.” (Genesis 7:24, NIV)
Yup, 150 days. That’s how long Noah and his family were sequestered in the ark, forced by calamity to withdraw from the world with no human company but one another. If 40 days signifies completeness of time, then 150 days signifies … way too stinkin’ long of a time. No longer symbolic, no longer cute, no longer novel.
Just way … too … long.
As those first 40 days and nights came to a close and the rain stopped, Noah and his family must have felt thrilled. With the worst of the danger passed, they must have been itching to end their confinement.
But that’s not what happened. It dragged on and on.
The story of humanity’s deliverance from global devastation is a story of counting days and losing track of days. It is a story of thinking the worst is over, only to find it’s just begun.
It is a story I am holding on to today, because it means I am not the first child of God to feel the way I am feeling.
Prayer
God of the endless march of days, be with me in these hard times.
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The Longest Shortest Time
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May 14, 2020
Written by Kit Novotny
With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. - 2 Peter 3:8 (NRSV)
The mysterious alchemy of sacred time, according to 2 Peter, sounds a lot like the dual nature of time with children.
Time with kids does weird things. It drags. Like an endless witching hour bouncing on a yoga ball with a colicky newborn until your arms fall off, or ten minutes keeping a squirrelly toddler from certain death (which you’d swear was at least an hour), or the longest awkward silence with a pubescent tweenager. There are days that feel like eternities, bottomless pits leading to new levels of exhaustion.
Time with kids does weird things. It flies. Like some kind of fast-forward warp-speed carnival ride, the clock hands spinning. Parents throughout every age rub their eyes and ask the perennial question: “When and how did my little baby turn into this big kid?” or eventually “…into this grown adult, sometimes, this stranger?”
The comedian Tig Notaro has a joke that all her friends who are having kids send out totally predictable updates inevitably laced with the question, “Can you believe it?” Like, “Caitlin is starting kindergarten this year. Can you believe it?” After a long pause, she deadpans, perfectly: “I don’t know. I mean, what is she, about five? That sounds about right. Yeah, I can believe that.” It’s funny because it’s true. But when it’s your kid, the simple reality of time passing is hard to believe, impossible and miraculous, both the thing most longed-for and most wished-against.
The days are long, but the years are short, as many a well-meaning acquaintance has offered to frazzled parents just trying to make it to bedtime. Time with kids, like time with God, does weird things. It is the longest, shortest time (which also happens to be the name of my favourite parenting podcast). It drags and flies, expands and contracts. And through it all, God is patient with us.
Prayer
Eternal One, all time is yours. Remind us, by your amazing grace, that when we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing your praise, than when we’d first begun.
May 20, 2020
Written by Quinn Caldwell
The LORD leads me beside still waters;
they restore my soul.
They lead me in right paths
for their name’s sake.
- Psalm 23:1-3 (NRSV, adapted)
My son and I hike along, looking for the next flash of colour. Those who knew the way through this forest have gone ahead of us, painting blue blazes on the trees to lead us in right paths.
I think of the ancestors who set aside this state forest, the ones who blazed the trail. What did they think we’d be using this for? Did they know that one day we’d be out here because we had nowhere else to go except the living room? That we’d be walking their path in search of virus-free air?
What about the ones who built the local library? What would they say if they knew the building was closed, the books inaccessible ... but that the library was going strong, doing a rip-roaring business restoring people’s souls with books downloaded from the sky?
How about the founders of your church? What would they say about the still living waters God and your pastors are pouring through your screen each week despite the shuttered sanctuary? Would they recognize you as their church, worshiping there in your jammies in the living room?
Maybe hiking in the woods to escape lockdown isn’t what the sylvan ancestors envisioned. Maybe accessing your library on your phone isn’t what the bookish ancestors planned for. Maybe church on the computer isn’t the kind of thing the charter ancestors would have wanted.
Or maybe it is, exactly.
Prayer
For the gifts of the ancestors, for the paths they blazed and the institutions they started, and for your Spirit, showing us new ways and purposes for using them, thank you. Amen.
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The Power of Patience
May 19, 2020
Written by marchae grair
Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. - James 5:7 (NIV)
“No mom. I can do it.”
Of course I knew it all at five. After relentlessly telling my mom I didn’t need her help brushing my teeth, she finally gave in. It took approximately 2.5 seconds for me to drop a huge glob of toothpaste on my new dress.
It was picture day, and she sent me to school with a smiling face and a huge white stain in the centre of my chest.
My first school picture is my favourite school picture because it was my first real lesson in the wisdom of patience.
There are so many times I’ve looked at God’s presence in my life like I looked at my mother’s hand that day. I want God to just hand over my problems and let me figure out a solution. So many of us share the kryptonite of the “just let me do it” spirit.
In God’s Divine wisdom, perhaps She knows we need reminders to slow down and wait.
James told the early Church that there is reaping in the waiting. He explains farmers must spend just as much time planting as they do waiting – and both are equally important to the process of growth.
Maybe it’s time we slow down and let God have our toothbrush.
We might just hear a Word from on high. We might realize we should go left instead of right.
We might just realize how much wisdom can be found in the waiting.
Prayer
Dear God, in a world that doesn't stop moving, help me find peace in showing patience. Amen.
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Share to PrintPrintShar
The Same Boat
May 18, 2020
Written by Vince Amlin
The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners … but the centurion ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, and the rest to follow, some on planks and others on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land. - Acts 27:42-44, excerpted (NRSV)
Some say we’re all in the same boat during this pandemic. But as this story from Acts shows, even people in the same boat aren’t in the same boat.
Some can swim; some can’t. Some have decision-making power; some don’t. Some have just been saved from death; others are still heading to their executions. Not the same boat.
When I pray with members of my congregations who still have to leave their homes every day to do work that is unsafe, I know we’re not in the same boat.
When I hear my friends Kaji and Donna describe ministry in New York City, where, as I write, almost 1 in 400 people has died, I know we’re not in the same boat.
When I see that black citizens of Chicago are dying at 6-times the rate of whites, I know.
We are not even in the same storm.
Paul himself offers a different model of solidarity. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
Rather than claiming we’re in the same boat, the gospel tells me to find out about my neighbour’s boat. Seek to understand their experience of this storm. And listen when they tell me what I can never understand.
It prompts me to ask how we ended up in such different boats. And do something about it. And not stop until everyone is brought safely to land.
Prayer
Bring us all safely to land.
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At the Cross
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May 17, 2020
Written by Mary Luti
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. - John 19:25 (NRSV)
Most COVID-19 deaths haven’t been good deaths in that way we hope death will be: comforted by family, eased by sedatives, soft music playing in the room. They’ve been isolated in ICUs, stacked in chaotic corridors, hidden in nursing homes where no one noticed for days.
This isn’t to say that doctors and nurses haven’t been heroic, risking their own lives to render beautiful care. It’s only to say that what’s come upon us is a genuine horror.
Most of us don’t work in overwhelmed hospitals and makeshift morgues. We’re not digging anonymous graves. We’re shielded from these awful scenes.
And why would we want to dwell on them, anyway? Aren’t we an Easter people? Don’t we specialize in hope, in divine silver linings, in life in the midst of death?
Yes, and we’re right always to insist on hope. But maybe not so reflexively, maybe not so fast. For there are times when we’d do better to stay longer at the cross, to stand still there absorbing the pain for a while before we proclaim the Easter joy.
Faith isn’t faith if it marches us straight to glory without passing despair. If it notices the statistics but not the deaths. If it gets Jesus off the cross and into glory with unseemly haste. Our piety must never separate us from our humanity. If we are too quick to say, “All will be well,” we make faith incredible.
Christians live in the midst of two realities – unrelenting pain and a joy no circumstance can alter. Faith never evades that pain to proclaim that joy.
Prayer
Jesus, keep us near your cross, even as we announce in hope the death of death in your glorious resurrection.
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Sh
It’s Going to Be Bad
May 16, 2020
Written by Rachel Hackenberg
“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away.’ … I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” – John 14:27b-29 (NRSV)
It’s the speech that I call The Great Assurance – Jesus’ efforts to prepare, to steady, and to comfort those closest to him before the you-know-what hits the fan.
“You have heard me say, ‘It’s going to be bad.’ I’m telling you again – it’s going to be bad – so that when the bad begins and when the bad overwhelms you, you’ll be prepared to hold on to love and remember that you’re not alone.”
Infectious disease experts are telling us that the bad will be with us for many months.
Climate scientists are telling us that the bad will be impacting human behavior for decades to come.
Psychologists are telling us that the bad could have generational consequences.
Genocide scholars and anti-racism activists are telling us that the bad will keep rearing its evil head, day after day.
“I’m telling you, ‘It’s going to be bad,’ so that you’ll be prepared to hold on to love and remember that you’re not alone. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Friends, it’s bad these days – for a lot of reasons. Many of us feel unprepared. Instability is on public display when we most need steadiness. Comfort seems to be practicing social distancing.
Keep holding on to love.
Remember that you’re not alone.
Keep holding on to love.
Remember that you’re not alone.
Prayer
It’s bad, Jesus. It’s really bad, and the end isn’t in sight. Let there be love, for the living of each day. Let there be solidarity, for the perseverance of healing.
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to PrintPrintShare to FacebookFacebookShare to MoreMore
Wait…How Long?
Share
May 15, 2020
Written by John Edgerton
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. - Genesis 7:11-12 (NIV)
Forty days is a good, solid, biblical number. It signifies completeness, totality. It is time fulfilled. For it to rain for forty days means it well and truly rained for as long as one could imagine.
But here’s the part of the story that I forgot from Sunday School: exactly how long Noah and his family had to stay in the ark. Hint: it’s a lot longer than 40 days.
“And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.” (Genesis 7:24, NIV)
Yup, 150 days. That’s how long Noah and his family were sequestered in the ark, forced by calamity to withdraw from the world with no human company but one another. If 40 days signifies completeness of time, then 150 days signifies … way too stinkin’ long of a time. No longer symbolic, no longer cute, no longer novel.
Just way … too … long.
As those first 40 days and nights came to a close and the rain stopped, Noah and his family must have felt thrilled. With the worst of the danger passed, they must have been itching to end their confinement.
But that’s not what happened. It dragged on and on.
The story of humanity’s deliverance from global devastation is a story of counting days and losing track of days. It is a story of thinking the worst is over, only to find it’s just begun.
It is a story I am holding on to today, because it means I am not the first child of God to feel the way I am feeling.
Prayer
God of the endless march of days, be with me in these hard times.
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to PrintPrintShare to FacebookFacebookShare to MoreMore30
The Longest Shortest Time
Share8
May 14, 2020
Written by Kit Novotny
With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. - 2 Peter 3:8 (NRSV)
The mysterious alchemy of sacred time, according to 2 Peter, sounds a lot like the dual nature of time with children.
Time with kids does weird things. It drags. Like an endless witching hour bouncing on a yoga ball with a colicky newborn until your arms fall off, or ten minutes keeping a squirrelly toddler from certain death (which you’d swear was at least an hour), or the longest awkward silence with a pubescent tweenager. There are days that feel like eternities, bottomless pits leading to new levels of exhaustion.
Time with kids does weird things. It flies. Like some kind of fast-forward warp-speed carnival ride, the clock hands spinning. Parents throughout every age rub their eyes and ask the perennial question: “When and how did my little baby turn into this big kid?” or eventually “…into this grown adult, sometimes, this stranger?”
The comedian Tig Notaro has a joke that all her friends who are having kids send out totally predictable updates inevitably laced with the question, “Can you believe it?” Like, “Caitlin is starting kindergarten this year. Can you believe it?” After a long pause, she deadpans, perfectly: “I don’t know. I mean, what is she, about five? That sounds about right. Yeah, I can believe that.” It’s funny because it’s true. But when it’s your kid, the simple reality of time passing is hard to believe, impossible and miraculous, both the thing most longed-for and most wished-against.
The days are long, but the years are short, as many a well-meaning acquaintance has offered to frazzled parents just trying to make it to bedtime. Time with kids, like time with God, does weird things. It is the longest, shortest time (which also happens to be the name of my favourite parenting podcast). It drags and flies, expands and contracts. And through it all, God is patient with us.
Prayer
Eternal One, all time is yours. Remind us, by your amazing grace, that when we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing your praise, than when we’d first begun.
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