Last night I spent reading church newsletters online of an Episcopal Church I know. The letters from the vicar - as well as the sermon notes still online - expressed a deep faith in Jesus and confidence in scripture. He took a risk with his community, a community he had founded many years ago but it appears there was an intervention from Elsewhere and the risk failed. It saddens me more than words can say to have read these church newsletter and the sermon notes and to feel that there was a major casualty in this crisis and somehow I missed it, I was so caught up with the issues facing my own community that I did not know.There are many casualties in this crisis, many who are brokenhearted, many who are enraged because they are in pain. I am wondering, as I sit here in the Starbucks on 19th Street in the heart of our nation's capital, of the physicians' oath "to do no harm."
I wonder about two million dollar loans and interviews with the BBC. I wonder about the people who are sitting outside this window on an unusually warm January afternoon and if they've ever come across that Carpenter from Galilee. I wonder about that little village in the Sudan. I wonder about an old friend in Orlando. I wonder about why Hillary Clinton cried or why I failed to hear the cries of a friend just up the road.
1 comment:
[*Somber, somewhat introspective, somewhat wistful voice*]
BB,
I don't know how to respond ... in one sense a assured "finally the Lord used something." As I was once a part of your "things" now walking with another group and don't know how to communicate that recently I've sense a tooting of your group's horn that might deften one's ear to those outside your group. In some ways I check this blog less often than I used to feeling that disconnection for elevation of one over another. In another, I'm heartbroken with you, somewhere which the Lord and you know, is a group of beloved servants in a troublesome spot.
When I do an inventory of my own life and my own sins, I can not throw any stones. First off, how often have I smugly inventoried to myself that I have exactly the opportunities another, whom you know, would love to have? While I probably never avail myself of them as this other would because we're at two different points and subconsciously seeking two different things for fulfillment, I liken it to the first accusation and no better than you. Yet, the Lord in His grace has given us the power of empathy that causes us to be able to transcend our limited experience.
It reads as if the Lord in His mercy has done that to you today through this beloved faithful servant in a difficult circumstance. In your vulnerable of this post, you done the same for me.
I have no answers, other than prayer and trust to our God. Thank you for sharing. May the our Lord have mercy on all of us miserable sinner as we fumble our way through our appointed times.
Pax,
Kevin
PS. May He guide these servant BB knows to a a safe sanctuary in the present troubles!
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