Streams of Mercy
Driving through the country one day last week, I passed a little church with a sign sharing the following message: “Let the Sonshine protect you from a Sinburn.” I like this one too: “Feeling Puzzled? Is God Your Missing Peace”; and this one: “You may be the Hope someone finds today.” I always wonder how churches come up with something different each week! I notice bumper stickers too. One memorable one is this: “Honk if you love Jesus. Text if you want to see him real soon.” We all know what this means!
Years ago, I came upon a bumper sticker in the bookstore at Montreat: “God Bless the People of All Nations.” I bought it and placed it proudly on the rear bumper of my silver Chevy Malibu. When I returned home, someone in the Food Lion parking lot had this to say to me: “You’d better replace that with “God Bless America” if you live around here.” I realized then that bumper stickers don’t invite a conversation! If that person had bothered to talk “with” me instead of “at” me, he would have learned about my love for America, as well as my desire for blessing for all people. I saw another bumper sticker on another trip to Montreat: “Coexist” centered on the sticker and different kinds of animals and people filling either side. I bought it and have it on a bulletin board in my office at home.
The only other bumper sticker I’ve had states this: “Make America Green Again.” I like that, and have it tacked on my laundry room door! I suppose if someone saw it they would think immediately of another similar slogan – a political one. I heard on public radio about a German vendor selling a certain baseball hat with the slogan – “Make Germany Hate Again.” I shudder to think all that is implied in that slogan. And then there are others: “By the Time you Read this I will be Reloaded.” (with a picture of a handgun on the sticker ); “I Work for My Family, Not Yours. Get a Job.” I always wonder about such slogans, and long to talk with the people who put them up for all to see. There’s a story behind each of these slogans, I’m sure!
I drink tea out of my “In Everything Give Thanks” mug each morning, and have a “Live, Love, Laugh” magnet on my refrigerator, a bookmark with “Let Your Life Speak” (an old Quaker saying ) and a “God Alone” stone that I keep in a dish on the kitchen counter. Each of these objects speaks a “heart thought” that is a part of who I am, and I would hope they would invite conversation with those who happen to see them, and contribute to building a new relationship.
We’re living in a time when it seems we want to come up with clever, short saying and slogans to define who we are and what is important to us. As we take note of messages on bumper stickers, baseball caps, shirts and signs, let’s have conversations with one another about the meaning of it all.
“Imagine if instead of wearing our beliefs on the back
of our cars or on the front of our baseball caps, we set
out to try to discern together God’s hopes for one another,
for the world, for all of creation? None of which can be
contained in a few sentences of our own making.
All of which demand our energy, intelligence, imagination
and love – or to put it succinctly enough for a bumper
sticker: Our Lives, Our All.” (Jill Duffield, Presbyterian Outlook, August 2019)
Yesterday in worship we read part of Colossians and Paul’s challenge to “put off one’s old nature, and put on one’s new nature in Christ.” Perhaps that could translate into the bumper sticker message: “Off with the old, On with the new”! What wonderful conversations might be had as we discuss what it means to do that, and come to realize it’s something we have to do again and again!
Giving thanks for bumper sticker messages, for the messages we share with one another as we live our lives from day to day, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth