With growing concern about the coronavirus, J. Herbert Nelson, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. issues this Call to Prayer:
“As the novel coronavirus has captured the headlines in recent weeks, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fear of the unknown have raised anxiety and caused widespread apprehension. Financial markets have wobbled and people of Asian descent in this country and around the world have been unfairly targeted. This virus has exposed the vulnerability and fragility of the global community.
As we struggle with the horrific impact of the deadly virus that has infected so many around the world, we cannot but call upon our God for help and healing. Please join me in crying out for relief from this plague.
We pray for healing for those who are infected, in all the world.
We pray for all who already have lost loved ones to the illness and those who will yet suffer such loss.
We pray for doctors, nurses and aides providing medical care, for insight in their caring, and for their health and well-being.
We pray for wisdom for the medical and scientific experts who are desperately seeking ways to control the spread of the virus.
We pray for public officials who must make the hard decisions about the quarantining of those who may have been exposed to the virus; and we pray for all those for whom those decisions feel like unjust imprisonment.
We lift up the Church in every land, as work is done to bring Christ’s healing presence and peace in this difficult time.
We pray for God to keep us alert to the threats posed by such a worldwide crisis, remembering the millions of God’s children who live in places where the availability of medical care is meager or nonexistent.
May God open our hearts, our financial resources, and our political will, so that the vision of a better future can become a reality for all of God’s children.
In the Providence of the God who created us, in the Passion of our Savior Jesus Christ who redeems us, and in the Power of the Holy Spirit through whom God’s will is done, we offer our prayer.”
Lord hear our prayer. Amen.
Elizabeth
We gathered at Jackson Springs Presbyterian on Ash Wednesday to receive the blessing of a smudged cross of ashes, and to hear once more the words: “Dust you are and to dust you shall return.” When I lead such services, I add the words, “May Christ raise you to new life,” and the journey begins.
One of my Lenten disciplines each year is to be alert to lessons gleaned from readings I do from day to day. I recently read an e-mail a dying man wrote his dear friend, which was published in that friend’s church newsletter.
“The hardest part of dying is the haunted hunch that I’m leaving loose ends, that I don’t have enough time to complete things, important things … There’s something about completion, a satisfaction which comes only with tying up loose ends and bringing a story to its proper conclusion … If our story finds completion or if it ends abruptly and too soon, still, it is a part of a larger story whose author is grander than we are.”
He goes on to explain the subtle distinction between being finished and being complete – something I’d never thought of before. “To finish something is to bring it to an end. To complete something is to tie up all the loose ends.” Recalling Jesus cry from the cross, “It is finished,” he goes on to say that “Jesus life is finished, but Christ’s life continues – resurrection, ascension, glory, and finally, someday, completion. But not yet. Being finished doesn’t necessarily mean being complete … Lent invites our contemplation of this truth and the incorporation of our story into it. If Jesus can finish in incompletion, well, I suppose I can too. Penitence, then is the embrace of our personal incompleteness. Confession is our willingness both to see and to say this truth. Heaven is God’s tying up the loose ends.”
I’ve thought a lot about these words in recent days. When my life is finished, it’s finished, but not complete. God will bring it to completion in ways known only to God. God will tie up all the loose ends; God will perfect all that concerns me. (Psalm 138:8) As one growing older and dealing with health concerns, this is good news! In the words of our Brief Statement of Faith:
“In life and in death we belong to God …
with believers in every time and place,
we rejoice that nothing in life or in death
can separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I give thanks for those who share their journeys of life and faith in ways that light the way for others; for our faithful God who is with us from day to day and all our days; and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth
Frederick Buechner’s words always speak to my hearts as the Lenten journey begins, and I share these with you today, giving thanks for Buechner’s life and ministry.
“In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.
If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?
When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?
If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?
Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo?
Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?
Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?
If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?
To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.” (Listening to Your Life, p. 56)
With Ash Wednesday only days away, we’re on the threshold of another Lenten journey. Years ago, the words of a commercial encouraging booking a cruise to “Make your journey worthy of your destination!” – spoke volumes to me. The trip was to Alaska, and only by going with this cruise company would you have a journey “worthy” of that destination!
Asking the questions Buechner is posing, and living into their answers is a helpful beginning to that journey. May our journeys through Lent be “worthy” of our destination – Calvary’s cross, Easter’s empty tomb, and the joy of Christ’s resurrection! Grace, peace and traveling mercies all along the way.
Elizabeth