Our view from midway up the mountain last week in Colorado.
There is much sadness, fear, disappointment, and disorientation in the world today. COVID-19 as a global pandemic has thrown our society into the throes of disillusionment and pain like never before. And yes, I think I do mean NEVER. Never before have so many people been impacted socially, financially, emotionally, and health-wise with such a spread of communication, news, and information.
I have no answers, I mean no cheap comfort or to add to the noise. A prayer I prayed last week came out through the Spirit inside me and I’d like to pen it here.
God, we come to you as people who believe in paradox. Somehow, the essence of our reality is held in the unexplainable balance of your sufficient grace and unstoppable love and lands in the limits of our human understanding.
We trust you when we cannot find the usual power and privilege we rely on. Forgive us for ever thinking we had control and could do it ourselves. I’m still waking up to all the ways I run my own life while believing that I actually often put my whole trust in you. I do believe, help my unbelief.
By the power of your creation and the presence of your Peace on Earth, we believe there are no answers or transactional solutions but the promise of YOU with us. You introduced yourself as I AM, not I WILL DO…..
In times of uncertainty, we turn to you as one who holds differences as the dynamic interplay for life and paradox as the platform for finding faith.
As we face this pandemic where we are all affected but we are directed to stay home alone, when we don’t feel sick but have to keep far away, as protections to save the lives of some, wreck the [financial] lives of others, we trust you to lead us through “knowing”…
- You are three but ONE
- When we are weak, then we are strong
- The first will be last and the last will be first
- Jesus was fully God AND fully human
- In dying, we are brought to life
- When we lose our lives, we truly find them
- The wisdom of the weak shames the wise
- We can be certain of what we do not see
- Our greatest freedom is to live inside your limits
- You celebrate the lowly, left out, little, and lacking people and invite them to lead.
For all of these ways and the many more you will call to mind as we seek to find you in the divided ways we spend our days, at home but working, resting but fighting, healthy but held back, and very unsure but strangely at peace, we say thank you.
Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Amen.
