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)
At a Distance
Then God said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance. Moses alone shall come near the LORD; but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.” -...
Still, Still, Still
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things to great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. - Psalm 131:1-2a (NRSV) Maybe you’ve been feeling this...
Milcah’s Inheritance
Milcah sang a lullaby to her granddaughter Rebekah, born to Bethuel, You are a queen, gifted and beautiful, a sovereign over kings. You are the gladness of ancestors, and the celebration of the future. And Rebekah believed her grandmother Milcah, owned the inheritance...
Confession
We have listened to the wrong gods, O Holy Life, to the ones that say "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" and the ones that say "Your help is in the rat race." Hear your people protest: "How long?" Hear your people confess: "No more!" We have said our prayers to...
For the Sake of Expediency
The officials said to the king, “Jeremiah ought to be put to death, because he is discouraging the people who are left in this city.” King Zedekiah said, “Here he is – I won’t stop you.” So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern. - Jeremiah 38:4-6 (adapted)...
Nuanced
a sermon on Genesis 21:8-21 and Romans 6:1b-11, preached at Christ Episcopal Church (Shaker Hts OH) There is no nuance to it. There is no middle ground, there are not “both sides.” Sarah is in the wrong. Hagar is in the right. Sarah is wrong for oppressing Hagar,...
Troubled
Incline yourself like a dread warrior toward those you love, O Holy One. Count the hairs on the heads of Robert Fuller, Malcolm Harsch, Dominique Alexander, and comfort those terrorized by racism's awful fruit. Hear the cries of the children. Hear the cries of the...
Divest and Defund
The white Church is long overdue to acknowledge and repent of its theological fostering of, financial contribution to & gain from, continued complicity and silence in the face of racism. Long overdue. The work of acknowledgment is, I suggest, the preliminary work...
By the Oaks of Mamre
Stay awhile, O Stranger, for the night has been long and cruel and our souls are not yet wrung dry from weeping. Stay awhile, O Stranger, for the fires are raging on cultic altars built to sacrifice precious fruit to ravenous gods. Stay awhile, O Stranger, for the day...
