Yesterday was a special day at Jackson Springs Presbyterian Church. It was “Blanket the World With Love” Sunday, and we had a fellowship meal. It was so good to share to share our favorite dishes with each other, to move from table to table visiting over first the meal and then dessert. It was fun to watch the little ones run and play. It’s been a long time since we felt such joy in being together!
Our session meeting that evening seemed more hopeful than in recent months, more open in sharing, with words of appreciation and encouragement coming forth. We entertained some new thoughts and enjoyed remembering some activities we’d enjoyed in the past. While we still met in the Fellowship Hall, and sat only three to a table, no one wore a mask, and it was wonderful to see faces again!
A faithful Clerk of Session is a precious gift in the life of a Presbyterian minister, in the best of times and in the worst of times! When our work was done and I was ready to call for the closing prayer and adjourn, that faithful Clerk of Session shared a wonderful gift with us- a poem from the Presbyterian Outlook, by Barbara wood Gray:
Winning at Love
The pandemic gods
thought they had won
by thinking they could say
that touching and hugging were all bad
so they took them all away.
All the ways that we knew how
to love each other through,
and rise above the loneliness
of things we couldn’t do.
Little did those gods know
how true love finds its way
to make a difference in our lives
each and every day.
Exchange a loving look or smile,
look me in the eye.
Spend that extra moment
just passing time on by.
Put a note under the door.
Write someone far away.
The littlest acts of kindness
can take the sad away.
And that’s the biggest gift of all
that the year gave you and me …
that loving acts of kindness
abound for us to see.
So listen up for birdsong
and the love that’s in each other.
The pandemic gods can’t make us blind
to how to be a lover!
I’m so very thankful we’re moving toward a “new normal” and so very grateful for lessons learned along the way – and for those “streams of mercy, never ceasing!”
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (I Corinthians 13:7-8)
Elizabeth
I’ve been using Listening to Your Life, a daily devotional book by Frederick Buechner, for many years. “Love Each Other” seems important to share this Valentine’s Day.
“Love Each Other”
Matthew the tax-collector and Thomas the doubter.
Peter the Rock and Judas the traitor. Mary Magdalene
and Lazarus’s sister Martha. And the popcorn-eating
old woman. And the fat man in the pick-up. They are
all our family, and you and I are their family and each
other’s family, because that is what Jesus has called us
as the Church to be.
Our happiness is all mixed up with each other’s happiness
and our peace with each other’s peace. Our own happiness,
our own peace, can never be complete until we find some
way of sharing it with people who the way things are now
have no happiness and know no peace. Jesus calls us to show
this truth forth, live this truth forth. Be the light of the world,
he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there.
Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is
to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is
what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his
Church, tells us, to be and do.
Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead.
Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons. That is what loving each
other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it
is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that
– no matter how many other good and useful things it may
be doing instead – then it is not being what Jesus told it to be.
It is as simple as that.
We spend a lifetime learning to love each other, and I’m thankful for Buechner’s words to help us find the way. Happy Valentine’s Day, and may we learn to love each other as God has loved us.
Elizabeth
We read passages about two “call” stories at Jackson Springs Presbyterian yesterday. God comes close and calls each of us as he called those first disciples so long ago- sometimes in mystery, with visions of angels in the holy of holies, like Isaiah in the temple; sometimes in the common and ordinary of daily life- like Peter going about his work as a fisherman. Jesus challenged them with a call that broke into their routines, and helped them to see beyond their little worlds and catch a glimpse of something new.
God calls to each of us in the midst of our daily routines – teaching or going to class; clerking in a store, working construction; caring for toddlers; baking, cleaning and making a home; or riding a tractor and bailing hay …
Wherever we are, Jesus meets us and call us to go back out – out into the deeper waters. We’re called to go back out yet again- to launch out into the deep of God’s Word, where the Spirit can open up to us the wonders of God’s love. We’re called to launch out into the deeper waters of grace, and to grow in our understanding of all the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus. We are called to launch out into deeper understandings of our call to be a servant people in a world so needing to hear the good news.
The English navigator and seaman, Sir Frances Drake is known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580. While on his voyage around the world, he wrote this prayer:
Disturb us, Lord
when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
when our dreams have come true,
because we dreamed too little
when we arrived safely
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Let us make this the prayer of our hearts today, and see where God takes us! May God disturb us – we who dream too little and sail to close to the shore - so that we might dream bigger dreams and sail out into deeper waters.
Elizabeth