Blog
Reminders
“When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between [me] and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” – Genesis 9:16 (NRSV)
The world needs more reminders.
Guns need not just one safety lock but five safety reminders, plus a mandatory essay about violence, before each firing of a single bullet. Bombs need civilian ballot measures that pass by majority vote before being detonated against an enemy. Our emails should come with a tone-check, in addition to a spell-check, that we must review and approve before sending. Our picket fences should be engraved with “borders are a social construct” on every post, lest we forget that no one really “owns” the property on which they live.
We need more reminders that we are interrelated, fewer indicators that we are islands. We need more prompts to slow us down before we cause harm, and fewer restraints that limit us from love.
Make it a bow around the finger or a bow in the sky, but make it something that effectively deters us from destruction. Even God needed such a reminder. How much more humanity?
God set a reminder in the clouds to never again allow flood waters to separate living creatures from God’s presence. Paul expanded the list: It’s not only flood waters that cannot separate us from God; neither can angels or empires, histories or futures, perils or threats, nor anything else imaginable separate us from God.
With this assurance, we must remind ourselves constantly not to be separated from one another either.
Prayer: You remember, O Eternal God, what I too easily forget: that I am not my own, that I am inherently caught up in and bound to all others. Remind me.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
The Breaks
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, so far from the words of my groaning? Yet you are holy … and sovereignty belongs to you, the ruler over all the earth. All families and all nations worship before you; all who sleep in the earth and all who go down to the dust bow before you. – Psalm 22:1-3a and 27-29 (adapted, abridged)
Life can break you.
I don’t know whether I believe that God will never give you more than you can handle, but I know from experience that life shows no such restraints. And when life piles on, as it tends to do, sometimes we collapse; sometimes we eke through; sometimes we triumph; sometimes we bruise and bleed; sometimes we persevere; sometimes we break.
Most often, we do all of the above, in varying degrees, depending on the day. But we don’t survive this life in the grand scheme of things. Always, death comes.
Those are the breaks.
So to the One Who Brings Into Existence All That Is, we bow down.
For as long as we keep breathing through life’s breakage, we bend in prayer and humility to the One Who Holds Our Brokenness.
And when this life sends us back to the dust, when survival is no longer within our grasp, we bend in worship and witness to the One Who Continues The Story.
Life can break us. Thank God, there is One Who Remains Undeterred.
Prayer: Be with me in every dawn and dusk of this life, O God, and do not abandon me when I break.
cross-posted on the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
Chasing Donkeys
Now the day before Saul came [to the town], the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel.” - 1 Samuel 9:15-16 (NRSV) Saul comes to Samuel’s...
O People, Hope!
O people, hope in the Holy One in whom there is steadfastness and with whom there is healing! Blessed be the One whose heart is attentive to pain with compassion and accountability. Blessed be the One from whom nothing is hidden, though we create our own shadows....
Where Are You?
Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; God does whatever God pleases. … The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth has been given to human beings. - Psalm 115:2-3 & 16 (NRSV) Parenting college students is an interesting...
Shepherded
We want, O Shepherd -- how much we want! To be esteemed, to be secure, to be carefree, and we hoard to fill our insatiable egos. Feed us with the unlimited harvest of love, in all and through all and for all. We are tired, O Shepherd. Let us lie down, guard us as we...
At the Table
You make me lie down in green pastures; you lead me beside still waters. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. - Psalm 23:2 & 5 (NRSV) Green pastures aren’t hard to come by when you grow up in...
Protest (A Psalm)
The Holy One has been rejected so that routine might not be disrupted. Cry out, O Brokenhearted! The Holy One has suffered so that the murderer might walk free. Cry out, O Brokenbodied! Raise your lament, all you who are witnesses. Do not hold back your rage before...
Heart and Soul
Here is my heart, O Holy Life: ancient with the dust of stars, new as the day I was born. What use can it possibly have if it beats only for itself? Here is my soul, O Mystery: reluctantly tethered to flesh, marked with scars and calluses. Who else can recognize it...
Sunset
Light runs out before love is finished -- some days, I think, even before love begins -- and the horizon blazes with the angry grief of time we wish we'd had, moments we missed, stories we didn't begin to write together or could've written differently if the sun had...
Easter Feast
Who will break the fast? Joyful Jesus, how dare we continue to feed upon scarcity when there is a rich feast spread over endless banquet tables so that all who are hungry may know peace? We raise a glass to you -- Holy Abundance, Open Invitation, Broken Bread....
