Category: Faith and Values

Easter Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, prayer

O Gracious, eternal God, on this Easter morning we pray for the world with all its challenges and uncertainties, and for those in positions of leadership.

Lord, hear our prayers.

For those fighting for their lives as we speak, for the isolated and lonely, the quarantined, and unemployed.
Lord, hear our prayers.

For those with chronic pain, addiction and, and depression made worse by this stress.
Lord, hear our prayers.

For children who don’t understand what’s going on and for soon-to-be graduates who wonder what their future will look like.

Lord, hear our prayers.

O Merciful God, hear the prayers of your people as we join our hearts and spirits to celebrate again the miracle of Easter. We’ve never heard the story quite like this, Lord, but it’s the same story most of us have heard every year. We’re grateful for the reassurance that Christ’s triumph over the grave gives us, but we’re not blown away with wonder and awe as those first witnesses were. We know how the Easter story ends.

But God, we’re caught up now in our own scary story, and we’re unsure because we don’t know how it ends. We don’t know how long this pandemic will last or what life will be like when it’s over. We’re hiding at home like those frightened disciples. We’re full of doubts like Thomas, and in our fear we may fail to recognize Jesus like the travelers on the road to Emmaus.

Speak to us Lord; call us by name as you did Mary so the scales will fall from our eyes. Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord, we so need to see you like no Easter before. Show us your resurrection power over fear and doubt and boredom. Give your life-giving power to health care workers and first responders. Open in all of us treasures of love and generosity and creativity and hope.
Let us see you all around us in unexpected places; in hospital rooms and nursing homes, in broken dreams and promises of graduations and celebrations postponed, and yes in that most surprising place, an empty tomb! Let us see you with Easter eyes of faith not just today, but every day of our lives.

Renewed with the Good News of resurrection help us put on the full armor of God, along with masks and gloves that we will be strong for each other and for those whose faith is faltering.

Just as you redeemed Mary and Peter and John from their fear and despair with a power that conquers death and ultimately changed the world, please sustain us through this pandemic. Teach us again that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us” because our hope is not in things of this world but in the risen Christ.

Even as we rejoice this Easter morning give us faith that triumphs over the grave, whatever that grave may be for each of us, for this Easter more than ever we give thanks that when we really don’t know what tomorrow brings we do know we can face it because He Lives. We may not know the day or time when this crisis will end, but we do know the One we can trust for our final victory, and that give us faith to carry on as long as it takes. Amen

On-line Easter service, Northwest UMC, April 12, 2020

Most Unusual Holy Weeks

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, spiritual discipline

2020 will certainly go down in the books as one of the most unusual Holy Week’s in history. Most churches will be virtually empty on Easter even as they are virtually and spiritually connected. With plenty of time to reflect on all kinds of things lately I have pondered Holy Week’s past. This one is very strange, and being retired I’m sure it is 100 times weirder and more difficult for my many colleagues engaged in active parish ministry.

I don’t remember if I’ve ever missed being physically in church on Easter in my entire life. Even as a child I remember my parents getting me up when it was still very dark outside to go to a bonafide sunrise service at our small country church. So worshipping on-line tomorrow will be a unique experience in my nearly 3/4 of a century of Easters. It has felt strange all week for me because due to technological concerns our church has actually “done” our worship all out of sequence. Our musicians actually have been recording music for Sundays on Tuesdays ever since in-person worship was canceled by COVID-19. And the pastors have been recording Scripture, prayers and sermons on Thursdays. Most weeks that’s been ok, although since I’ve been doing the pastoral prayers I must admit that I have frequently thought of something that should be included in the prayer for Sunday on Friday or Saturday, and then I remember, “Oh, yeah, that prayer is already done.”

But this week was even more disjointed liturgically. When I was in the Sanctuary on Thursday afternoon the big cross that hangs over our altar table was already fully bedecked in Easter Lillies. But then on Good Friday evening when we live-streame our Tenebrae service the lillies were gone and the Sanctuary was bathed in semi-darkness. It just felt weird. And I know even though our congregation will be worshiping together on-line Easter morning it won’t begin to match the feeling of being in an overflow congregation with our tradition of singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” to close the celebration of resurrection.

But in remembering other out of the ordinary Holy Weeks I inevitably thought about one that was more challenging even than 2020, although in a much different way. On April Fool’s Day 1993 I got one of those phone calls one never hopes to get. It was the cruelest April Fools Day “joke” I’ve ever gotten or ever hope to get. My mom, a healthy 70 year old that had never been sick in her life was in the hospital with what was either a stroke or a brain tumor. I was so dumbfounded I didn’t know which to hope was the correct diagnosis. My mother had always been the strongest member of our family, our rock. She was so tough she had her tonsils taken out sometime in her 40’s in the doctor’s office! And now with no previous symptoms she was in serious trouble. It turns out she had a glioblastoma brain tumor just like the one that killed her own mother seven years earlier. In fact her reaction when told of her condition was, “Just like Mom.”

Those kinds of brain tumors back then especially were never a good prognosis, and I don’t think they are even today 27 years later. Mom’s was so far advanced before she knew anything was wrong that just 3 days later on Palm Sunday we went down to visit her before her scheduled surgery on Monday morning only to find when we arrived that they were prepping her that evening for emergency surgery to relieve pressure on her brain. She made it through the surgery but was never the same again and died 3 months later.

That would be enough to complicate any pastor’s Holy Week, but it was far from the only curve ball fate threw my way that week. My mother-in-law was also in failing health. She was a few years older than my mom and had been in a nursing home for about 3 years, but her congestive heart failure was getting progressively worse that spring. So on Wednesday, while I was still out of town with my dad and sisters holding down the waiting room between brief visits with my mother I got word that my mother-in-law had died.

So a good friend drove a couple of hours to pick me up on Wednesday evening. I preached and led a Maundy Thursday service, and on Good Friday we drive a couple of more hours to bury my wife’s mother. And on Easter Sunday I preached about resurrection. It was one of the hardest but most meaningful Easter’s I can remember, but it was also one of the most meaningful. I wasn’t going through any routine rituals when I preached about death and resurrection. Those were not abstract concepts for me that April 1993 but very concrete realities.

And so they are again 27 years later. The pall of death hangs over all of us during this pandemic. The mind-boggling ever-increasing numbers of people killed by this awful virus make it impossible for most of us to avoid consideration of our mortality. Even when we try to ignore it the pull of the news reports is hard to resist. The images of exhausted nurses, gurneys in crowded hallways, lonely patients in nursing home windows, and mass graves cannot be erased from our individual and collective memories. We wake up every morning hoping it’s all a bad dream, only to find it is just another ground hog day on a continuous loop. Only the numbers change.

I’m writing this at 9:30 pm EDT, just a few hours earlier than when my parents roused me from sleep, not to find my Easter basket, but to go again to proclaim the good news that has sustained people of faith in hard times for 2000 years — Christ is Risen! He is risen Indeed! And because of what those words mean to us on an existential level so much deeper than Easter finery and lilies and chocolate bunnies, we will wake up tomorrow and carry on because there is something stronger in the human spirit than death.

Hallelujah! Amen.

Palm Sunday Pastoral Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, prayer

There are so many needs and so much we need to be grateful for that to try and list joys and concerns would take all day. So I’m just going to pause for a moment and ask you to pray wherever you are right now and share whatever you most want to say to God, knowing that God is always close enough to taste the salt of our tears, be they tears of joy or sorrow. Let’s pray. [PAUSE]

O Gracious and merciful God, this is not how we planned to celebrate Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. But we pray that this COVID interruption will disrupt the ruts we can get into with doing things the same old way. Traditions are important to give a sense of security, but when forced to do things in new ways we are reminded of how dependent we truly are on you as the source of the only real security there is.

Remind us that if the familiar rituals of this season are silenced the very stones Jesus walked on will cry out with the eternal truth of your kingdom. Because nothing in all creation can silence your power, O Lord; not fear or selfishness, not even this awful virus or any threat this world can throw at us. None of those can silence the cries of Hosanna for the one who has conquered death itself.

Today we remember a triumphant entry, but we know what lies ahead for our Lord this week. He has to walk the lonesome valley by himself. He will be betrayed and abandoned by the adoring crowds in his hour of greatest need. This Palm Sunday we feel like we’re walking that lonesome valley alone too, God. We are in hiding from an invisible enemy and fearful of friends and loved ones who might unwittingly inflict this curse upon us on those we love.

We’re tired, Lord, so very tired. It seems like this crisis has been going on forever, and yet we know we are far from the end. Give us strength to carry on when our arms are too weary. Don’t let us give up doing the things we all must do to save others. Grant us wisdom and courage for the living of this unusual Holy Week and the hellish weeks that may follow.

Strengthen us as you did Jesus so long ago to ride into Jerusalem knowing what lay ahead for him. Empower us with patience as you did the Hebrews for forty long years in the wilderness, as you did Jesus for 40 days of temptation by Satan, and as you did St. Paul through shipwreck and persecution to keep the faith, to fight the good fight and to finish this race. We know we can and we will persevere because all things are possible through you.

We need you like never before, O Lord, just as Jesus had need of that donkey so long ago. But even in our fear we also know that you have need of us. You need us to be the hands and feet of Christ for those in need; to pray, to check on our neighbors, to make phone calls to the lonely, to share what we can with those whose needs are more desperate than ours. We know you ask us to give all that we can, as Christ gave his all for us on that dark Friday.

We are so overwhelmed by the needs of those around us, those we hear about on the news, and we’re not even sure how to pray. And yet in our weakness we know your Holy Spirit intercedes for us in sighs too great for words.
Remind us daily to take time to breathe, [PAUSE]
to be still and know that you are God and we aren’t; to feel the life-giving breath of re-creation; the breath that is the living spirit of the risen Christ in which we live and move and have our being. For through him and with him we will be the church deployed in this Holy Week and in the weeks to come. Amen

Northwest UMC on-line worship, April 5, 2020

Our Jericho

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, purpose

I have a small tattoo on my wrist to remind me of a lesson I learned 15 years ago in a leadership development workshop presented by a California company, Klemmer and Associates. The tattoo is of Klemmer’s logo, and it comes from an exercise they do in one of their earliest workshops. The Red/Black game, like most of Klermmer’s training is very experiential. I won’t share the details of the Red/Black exercise because words can’t do it justice. You have to experience it to feel its power. What I will say is that prior to red/black experience I was ready to walk out of the whole workshop because of my own insecurities, but that game turned me around and convinced me to stick with the program, and I’m glad I did.

The Klemmer training taught me a lot about myself and a boatload of things about teamwork and collaboration, and playing the game of life as a win-win adventure, not a competition. On one of the weekend in California we did an outdoor team-building experience in a redwood forest. The location itself was awe-inspiring, but the final task/challenge we were given seemed absolutely impossible.

As I’ve been reflecting on this COVID-19 crisis we’re going through I’ve certainly had days when it too feels overwhelming, like we will never get through this. How will we ever come up with enough ventilators, masks, tests, health care workers, ICU beds, and PPE’s, an acronym I’d guess few of us knew a week ago, to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of critically ill people. We simply don’t currently have anything like the capacity we will need to meet the life and death needs that are coming. And when far too many people refuse to take the threat seriously it seems even more daunting. Some days I feel like we’re all on Apollo 13 and there aren’t nearly enough MacGyver’s around to figure out how to save us.

That’s the same feeling I had that day in the redwood forest when our group of 30-40 was taken over to a very large wooden wall that was probably 12 or 14 feet tall, and we were told to figure out a way to get everyone over that wall. I thought and may have even said out loud, “You’ve got to be kidding! There’s no way this group of all ages and all levels of physical fitness, or lack thereof, is ever going to get up and over that wall!” We might try marching around it for a week like Joshua’s people did at Jericho, or being in California we could hope for an earthquake to make the wall come tumbling down; but there was no way in the world we were all going over that wall. There wasn’t even a rope on it to scale it, as if most of us would have had the strength to do that!

One of the things that amazes me about the Jericho story in Joshua 6 is how obedient the priests and soldiers were when Joshua told them his plan for conquering this fortified and seemingly impregnable city. No one raises any doubts or questions about why just marching around the city for 7 days and shouting when the trumpet blew on day 7 would work! Surely there must have been some realists in the crowd who thought, “O, come on Joshua, you’ve got to be kidding!” (By the way, if you read Joshua 6, stop when the wall falls down. The rest of that story is brutal and gory and really bad theology.)

But that day in the redwoods was our second training weekend, and we had already done several others less daunting tasks that I didn’t think we could pull off either. So we began to strategize. There was a platform near the top on the back side of the wall; so we knew that if we could get a few people up there they could help pull others up. Being one of the runts in the group it was pretty easy for the stronger folks to boost me up so I could go over. Remember this was 15 years ago; so I was in much better shape than I am today. They did the same thing with some of the other lighter members of the group, and those of us on top were able to work together to assist others. And as the collective strength of the group on top grew we were able to help bigger and heavier people up.

Slowly but surely, one person at a time was lifted, pushed, and pulled over. The stronger guys built human pyramids for people to climb, but as the group on the ground grew smaller the options became more limited. Frankly I don’t remember all the tricks employed. As the platform on top got full those of us who arrived first were allowed to come down and watch from the ground.

I do remember that one concession made to safety was that we were given a vest made out of strong netting that could be used by the last person on the ground so those above would have something relatively safe to grab hold of and hoist him up. And thanks to the stronger members of our motley crew, the obstacle that looked impossible was conquered.

COVID-19 is a humongous obstacle facing the world today. I don’t know what creative solutions will be found to overcome this challenge, but this I do know, we cannot and will not succeed in this battle without every one of us doing whatever we can for the team, i.e. the human race to survive and conquer. That means huge sacrifice and risks for exhausted medical personnel, researchers and public health officials. It means creative use of technology for people to have their social and spiritual needs met. It means unemployed folks going to work in new and different fields where critical jobs much be done, things we used to think of as menial work like stocking grocery shelves, sanitizing public spaces, and delivering life necessities to those who are in need.

But for many of us it means doing the easiest and simplest thing ever asked of us – to just stay home and not take any risks of getting or spreading this virus. There are no excuses – we can all do this; and the longer some people refuse to make that small sacrifice the longer we are going to be in this crisis and the more people are going to die. Teamwork is not doing what is good for me and my glory or comfort. It means each of us doing what is needed for the entire team to succeed.

Maybe that’s the real miracle at Jericho – everyone did what they were told they needed to do, and when they did the wall came tumbling down!

Pastoral Prayer on John 4

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, prayer, Wellness

O Gracious God, it’s hard to know where to start today. It’s a day of National Prayer inspired by a pandemic. But for people of faith every day is a day of prayer. Please hear the deep desires of our souls that defy expression in mortal language.

We’re thirsty, Lord, but not for the water we can store up in our pantries and garages. We’re thirsty for living water, for blessed assurance that we don’t have to keep social distance from your eternal spirit. Remind us again of the wilderness time of our ancestors who were also thirsty, and you provided water and manna to sustain the–one day at a time. Like us they couldn’t see where they were going. They had no GPS that would give them an ETA. They didn’t know how long their wilderness time would last, and neither do we.

The Hebrew pilgrims were scared and wanted to go back to the familiar life they knew in Egypt, even if that meant being enslaved again. We’d like to go back too, God, to the “normal” routines we had just a week ago. We don’t always like our jobs or our schools, but they look really good to us now that we have to suspend them.

It’s no use hiding our fears and feelings from you, Lord. We know what the Samaritan woman at the well learned, that you know everything about us. You know some of us are mourning the loss of March Madness. Remind us of others who mourn the loss of loved ones. Some of us are already feeling trapped at home and getting cabin fever. But we know there are others who have no home to go to. We know health care workers would love to spend time with their families, and we thank you for all of those who are sacrificing their own safety on the front lines of this global struggle with a deadly invisible foe.

Calm our fearful hearts, Holy One. Help us be scared without being scary in the ways we treat others. Save us from playing the blame game so we can focus on accepting and living faithfully in the uncomfortable present. Most of us know little about the struggle for existence that people face every day in other places in our world. Forgive us our self-preoccupation. Guide us by the power of your Holy Spirit through this wilderness so we can live out of the abundance of your Living Water instead of a scarcity mentality fueled by fear.

Comfort us and everyone who is suffering just now. We pray for those who are most vulnerable to COVID-19, especially for those in nursing homes and their caregivers. We pray for young people whose dreams have been shattered by cancellations of tournaments, performances and educational opportunities. Save us from dispensing pious platitudes about “learning life lessons” and show us how to just offer empathy and love instead.

Guide our government leaders on every level. Inspire the researchers desperately searching for ways to unlock the mystery of this virus. Help us all learn from this time in the wilderness so that when we emerge on the other side, whenever that is, we may be a stronger and better people, not just in America but in unity with our sisters and brothers around the world. For this virus has shown us how interdependent we really are on this little planet.

You have also taught us again the true danger of storing up our treasures on earth. Most of us have less net worth today than we did a week ago, by the world’s standards. Please don’t let our fear about that loss reduce our compassion for those who had no worldly net worth to start with. As our financial standard of living declines please let our standard of loving increase faster than this virus can spread.

Finally, O well of eternal wisdom; help us to be open to the heavenly surprises around us even in dark days. The water we are thirsting for may come from a total stranger like a woman at a well, even one we consider an enemy. May we, like that woman, go and share the good news of the Gospel with others in new and creative ways. We know fear is contagious, Lord. Remind us again that love and hope are even more so. Quench our thirst; give us living water that we may find ways even now to start an epidemic of compassion and love. Amen

Faith for a Pandemic

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, prayer, purpose, self-care

Like many of you I have had a hard time tearing myself away from all the bad news about the corona virus. Maybe it’s just gallows humor or the old “laugh to keep from crying” strategy, but I have been trying to combat all the fear and trembling with humor. For example when the local news came on at lunch time today with “Breaking News” about another day of the Dow plunging like a lead balloon I found myself singing an old song from the 1960’s. Yes, I’m in the “at risk geezer group” for Covid-19, and that also means I remember song lyrics from my youth better than what I did yesterday.

The song for today begins with one of those profound lines: “Down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down.” And reflecting on my disappearing retirement portfolio I changed the next lines to say,

“Going Broke ain’t hard to do.
Don’t take my funds away from me,
Don’t leave me broke in misery.
Don’t say that this is the end!
Instead of going broke
I wish that we were getting rich again.”

My apologies to Neil Sedaka and a lot of other artists who recorded “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” and assurance that I was home alone and didn’t inflict my lousy singing voice onto any other living creatures. Although if Alexa was listening she may have been traumatized.
On a more serious note the Scripture that is running through my head today is one from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)

Times of crisis force us to examine what really matters in life, what is really of lasting value. As all kinds of sporting events, performances, concerts and other gatherings are being cancelled we can use the time we normally would have spent there to reflect, pray and ponder where our treasures really are. Unlike most other parts of the world many of us Americans don’t really know what it’s like to “walk in the valley of the shadow of death.” (Psalm 23:4) Words of Scripture in times like these can become more than pious platitudes and be words of hope and assurance when fear threatens to shake the foundations of our faith.

So one suggestion for these troubled times is to be grateful for the gift of time to meditate on the real treasures of life. Give thanks for extra time with family, for time to check on your elderly neighbor. Formal worship services are being cancelled in some places as a valid precautionary measure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t worship wherever we are in whatever way nourishes our souls. Take time every time you feel the tentacles of fear taking hold to just breathe deeply and “Be still and know” you are embraced by the ground of all being that is bigger, stronger and more enduring than this or any crisis we will ever face.

Numbers

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Faith Development

Numbers – corona virus up, stock market way down, my weight up and even my clocks confused about what time it is. The only good number is on the thermometer, and I’ll certainly take that; but I need more to shore up the shaky foundations of my faith.
And so I turn to Psalm 46 where there are no numbers because faith cannot be measured or quantified. God’s power and presence is eternal and infinite. We can’t see it or prove it. The source of our being is above and beyond any human metrics. We just have to take a leap of faith and trust, not because of things we can count or measure – but in spite of them.

“God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Grounded Guerrillas of Grace

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, prayer, spiritual discipline

“To wed guerrilla with grace suggests that the truer cause is God’s kingdom. Since the ‘principalities and powers’ are never completely ‘out there,’ but also stomp and rumble around ‘within,’ a significant piece of the life to be reclaimed or liberated is the prayer himself or herself. In an unavoidable way the struggle begins—and begins again and again and again—with choosing sides. Choose one side and you’re a conformist; choose another and you’re a guerrilla!”
You may be surprised to know that those words were not written about the current struggle for the soul of our nation, and yet they seem as fresh as new mown hay on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday 2020. I had not read those words for over 30 years, and reconnecting with them recently is like embracing an old friend. They are from a book of prayers entitled “Guerrillas of Grace” by Rev. Ted Loder and were published in 1981. A friend blessed me with a new copy of the book this week and as soon as I opened it I knew it was a gift from God.

My soul is weary with despair over worldly and personal concerns to the point that I am questioning the foundations of my faith again. I’ve been down that road before, and Loder’s “old” book reminded me again that while much has changed in the last 40 years, the struggle with evil in its multitude of forms is still the same as it was for Amos, Jesus, Paul, Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Dr. King. As it was in the first century Roman Empire these words from Ephesians 6 still ring true in the 21st century” “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the world rulers of this present darkness…”

Even before I began rereading Loder’s book I was reminded of a song that inspired my meek guerrillaness back in the decade that Loder was compiling these prayers. I remember preaching a sermon in those days on the David and Goliath story, one that I have been drawn too as one who has always been of very small stature. I’ve since distanced myself from it because of its reliance on violence to resolve conflict, but all that aside the song it led me too was one that says:

“To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star.” (“The Impossible Dream,” by Joe Darion and Mitchell Leigh)

I have certainly not lived up to that impossible dream, and I understand that none of us will ever fully conquer the principalities and powers of evil without or within ourselves in this life. That’s why we will always need guerrillas of grace to journey with us and share the power that strengthens hearts and minds arms that are too weary of the world’s woes with prayer that is in Loder’s words attentive, open, imaginative/playful, intentional, personal and corporate.

As one who lives with ambivalence as a staple of my existence I am challenged by Loder’s statement that “Ambivalence generates resistance. It is hard to get carried away when we’re hanging on tightly to the familiar.” I am also an impatient prayer. I want results yesterday if not sooner, and Loder cautions that being a guerrilla of grace “may mean being carried away as a stoker on a slow freighter.” One of my chores as an adolescent was putting coal in the stoker that fed our home’s furnace. (Yes, I am That Old!) It was a daily thankless and never-ending chore, putting coal in and taking the “clinkers” of unburned waste out of the furnace; but if I failed to do it our whole family would have been cold, pipes would freeze and life would have been dire.

I’m rambling, but I do rejoice that Loder has re-stoked my spiritual furnace with just the introduction to his book. I look forward to getting reacquainted with the prayers that follow; and I want to close by sharing the first prayer in the book, entitled “Ground Me in Your Grace.”

“Eternal One,
Silence, from whom my words come;
Questioner, from whom my questions arise;
Lover, from whom all my loves are hints;
Disturber, in whom alone I find my rest;
Mystery, in whose depths I find healing and myself;
Enfold me now in your presence;
Restore to me your peace;
Renew me through your power;
And ground me in your grace.”

T’was Two Days Before Christmas

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

T’was two days before Christmas and all through my mind thoughts and feelings are bouncing before and behind. On one channel bad news of the world on a continuous loop: refugee kids in cages; impeachment shots fired across a partisan chasm that divides families and friendships; violence rages in streets from Hong Kong to India; and climate crisis wildfires and extreme weather bombard our fragile planet. Another brainwave features heavy grief for the parents of a young man I will bury on Friday. A personal memory that my father would have celebrated his 98th birthday this day tugs at my heart competing with the siren song of consumerism Christmas.

And yet if I listen carefully beneath the static a still small voice proclaims a miracle where one day’s lamp oil lasts over a week—a secret humans have celebrated for millennia every time the solstice darkness surrenders to more minutes of daylight. Another voice chimes in “Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

I believe. And yet the cosmic tug of war between darkness and light still plays out in my frazzled brain. I drag my heels in futile resistance to turning the page of my mortality calendar into the December years of my life. Despair and hope swing light sabers to see which will rule the new year.

But I know in my better moments that incarnation doesn’t come when it’s easy or unneeded. It does not come with “swords loud clashing or roll of stirring drums,” but “silently, so silently” the the gift of hope is given where “meek souls will receive it still,” not in Time Square or St Peter’s but in a dark cave in a one-stable town where there was no room in the Bethlehem Hilton.

And by Menorah, or star in the east, or Solstice sunrise, the message resounds again and again – Let there be Light!

Peace and Goodwill

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, purpose

Note: I am pleased to share these good words from the Christmas letter of a fellow pastor. Bill Hull was a classmate of mine in seminary and has been a cherished friend now for over 50 years. I am pleased to share his thoughts as a guest contributor and offer a hearty Amen.

“Glory to God in the highest, and peace among people with whom God is pleased.” Luke 2:14 RSV

As we draw near to Christmas, this is a season of anticipation, a time of promise. It is the promise of peace and goodwill, not as pie in the sky by and by or among only heavenly beings, “but on earth…among people with whom God is well pleased.” I take that to be all people.

When God created, God proclaimed the work to be “good” as in “God don’t make no junk.” We on the other hand tend to criticize or to reject and exclude those whose sins are different from ours. To do so, we pick and choose from the buffet of laws and prohibitions in the Scripture to justify our inclusion among those “with whom God is pleased.”

The promise of peace and goodwill is sometimes hard to believe. We live in a time of deep division within our own country, of alienation from those who have been our historic allies and of threats of destruction from our enemies. We live in a time of domestic and foreign terrorism, a time of increasing hatred for those whose skin color, religion or lifestyle are different from ours. We live in a time when violence, death and duplicity are all around us. How do we believe in the promise of peace and goodwill among people?

I wish I had an easy answer. I don’t. I believe that a part of the answer to believing the promise is to be the promise. I believe that part of the answer is to act as if being loving is more important than being right. I believe that part of the answer is treating all people as beloved of God, created in God’s image. I believe that it means being peacemakers, that it means being neighbors to all who need what we have and what we are.

To be the promise is eternal life here and now. It is all that we can do. The rest is up to God.