God the first seamstress...
Then, God chooses to become like the ones created. And a created one clothes the God who arrives as a baby, swaddling Jesus again and again and again. Countless times in the haze of new motherhood, and then, entirely too quickly, the mother who carried divinity in her womb grumbles with mothers in every time and place at how quickly her child outgrows one garment and then another. She shakes her head in affection and exhaustion as she mends a tear. She sews again and again, mothering God, until one day she doesn’t need to sew for her child anymore because his burial shroud is sewn shut before hers is.
alleluias on a cold November morning
But this is true, regardless of what your heart mourns today:
Our faith equips us for sadness and mourning.
Our faith equips us with Lamentations and Psalms and the Beatitudes and the reality of Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Yes, our faith also brings us to Easter Sunday, but on a cold November day it may be hard to imagine spring’s alleluias.
believing the witnesses of injustice
And we, like Thomas, have stood back, shaking our heads at their stories, doubting their telling, unconvinced of their truth. We have demanded our right to see and touch, no matter how painful that demand is for someone else. We have held our tongues, except for the occasional spoken doubt.
This Easter season, I want to remove some of the saintly aura around the doubt of Thomas.
a pandemic of anxiety
The fear of the unknown is awful.
I’m beginning to believe the fear of the nearly known is worse - we’ve seen what has happened elsewhere. We’ve seen what happens to others. We are sure that we’re next.
It’s a strange uncertainty because we can be certain things will get worse, we just don’t know when.
But, we are unified in our uncertainty and while that is uncomfortable, today I am grateful for the unity.
Seeds & Stars
In each intentional placement and planting God-the-first-science-teacher wanted us to see that these Messiah promises are as bright and ancient as a star and as strong yet tender as a new shoot pushing through the soil.
We still long for reminders of the miracle.
We still long for the miracle itself.
Prayers of the People Following a Violent Death
Holy One, we dare once again to call you Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer;
though we are reeling from the violence in this world you created,
though we are angered and hurt by acts that feel as though they are beyond redemption,
though we grieve lives that were not sustained in their earthly form.
