Slidell Mission Trip 2018
Day 1 – Arrival, March 4th There wasn’t supposed to be a Year 13. Let me step back a bit. It is 71 degrees and sunny right now in Slidell, Louisiana. It’s 36 degrees with a forecast for snow at Kents Hill. Just saying. This is the first entry in our blog for the 13th Mission Trip to the Gulf Region. For those just joining us, we have been coming down to Louisiana and Mississippi since March 2006 to work at what is now the Epworth Project. Then, it was in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August/September of 2005. Since then, there have been many more natural disasters and this has been one of the hardest hit regions in the country. Hurricanes, tornados and floods seem to be a way of life down here and there is a steady list of things for us to do. And earlier this afternoon, the Executive Director, Jim Fatic let me know that he still gets calls for houses that haven’t been touched since Katrina. This week, we will be mostly working on houses that were damaged in floods from 2016. As always, we will be working for clients who do not have the means to otherwise make the repairs themselves. But we aren’t supposed to be here. Because this trip was only supposed to be a five-year gig when we first envisioned it. Here's another good reason we aren’t supposed to be here. On August 25th last summer, Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston and other areas of the Gulf region. Two weeks later, Hurricane Irma blew through the Caribbean and into Florida. Ten days later, Hurricane Maria became the worst natural disaster to ever hit Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. None of these storms severely impacted the Greater New Orleans area. At the beginning of the school year, I was asked if we be going to Florida or Houston this year. But I had already signed us up for Slidell based on this nagging feeling that we were going to be needed there. Upon arrival, I was told that this week there are 96 people from 4 organizations working at Epworth. And that is more than all of the folks combined since July of last summer. What I suspected was going to happen did in fact happen – the volunteers shifted to other areas and the folks here are struggling to meet the needs of the clients they have. So I’m glad we didn’t shift away, and the Epworth people are as well. I just finished a four day drive to get here (I selfishly left a day early to detour and meet my newest grandson, David.) Dr. Link and his daughter have just arrived from their three day adventure through the Nor’easter to arrive, and we are waiting for the groups who flew to arrive from the airport. And for the next several hours, they will come filtering in. Last arrival should be here by midnight. And bright and early tomorrow morning we will hit the job sites. Houses will be fixed, skills will be learned and stories will be shared. Lives will be changed, and at the end of the week we will be tired but it will be good. It always is. Even if we aren’t supposed to be here.
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Since 2018 began, I’ve been thrice to Massachusetts (Cabinet and Board of Ordained Ministry), once in New Hampshire (Cabinet appointment retreat), I’ve been once to Hawaii (family reunion), twice to Florida (mission trip and GBHEM training), and a stopover in North Carolina to meet our new Grandson. Whew, how lovely to settle back into Maine with spring sunshine and birdsong in the air. (We won’t talk about the spring skunk scent). In every communal aspect of our UMC network, from global to local, I enter thoughtful encounter with scripture, real and humble reflection on Christian living, and radical hospitality. My greatest hope is that my children and grandchildren will find, and help create, this kind of community. It’s easy for me to forget that not everyone lives life this way until I’m out of the network for a while and live in what feels like thinner air. (It’s also a joy when I encounter God’s grace in other ways and places that are not traditionally “Christian.”) And I find it increasingly difficult to participate in social media conversations that easily loose the listening quality and hospitality toward others that I find at “in person” gatherings. How might each of us infuse our shared virtual spaces with means of grace? My recent immersions in missional and healing communities have been all the more sacred for bible study before and during them. I’m so grateful for our 2017 Church Conference conversations that were shaped by the very first post-Pentecost Christ-following community’s experience. The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. - Acts 2: 42-26. CEB During a colleague’s February hospitalization, I heard amazed staff ask, “Who are you all?” They were amazed at community that cared enough to take turns keeping her company. During January’s MidMaine Volunteers in Mission to Florida, our clients said again and again that they couldn’t believe people would give up their own work and vacation time to spend a week helping people they didn’t even know. Why would we do that? It WAS amazing, community created in the space of a week, from communities across Maine, who lived, worked and worshiped together in Christ centered deepening. I Early Christians’ simple daily practices were reclaimed and reformed for a new day by the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, and other early Methodists as “means of grace:” prayer, searching the scriptures, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and christian conferencing. Elaine A Heath leads contemporary United Methodists through renewed practice of these every day blessings in “Five Means of Grace: Experience God’s Love the Wesleyan Way.” “In the book that set the trajectory for her intellectual and ecclesial work, The Mystic Way of Evangelism, Heath argues that evangelism is best practiced in the context of Christian communities gathered together around a Wesleyan rule of life for the sake of their neighbors…..To put these ideas into practice, Heath and some of her students in 2008 founded the first two communities that led to the formation of the Missional Wisdom Foundation in 2010. The Foundation fosters evangelistic communities that bring together Wesleyan spirituality and new monastic practices to work for the renewal of historically mainline denominations [with four hubs that] serve as educational immersion sites for students and congregations that want to learn how to take the gospel beyond the walls of the church.” (http://aftesite.org/elaine-heath/) These new faith communities are experiments in radical Christian living, in the Acts 2 style. Scripture comes alive. Encountering the living Christ then transforms people’s daily living in ways that overflow into surrounding communities with delight and hope. People are amazed by and drawn to what the Spirit is doing. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved. –Acts 2: 27. CEB What is your experience NOW of Christian community? Is there an element of wonder? Of openness to each other’s needs? Of being led by the living Christ’s vision? If it’s not as alive as what you’re reading about here, try incorporating the Means of Grace with authenticity this Lent. You might try it in your family, with a group of friends, or in your church. It could be something as simple as a weekly shared meal, discussion of one of Heath’s chapters from “Five Means of Grace,” and a shared promise to try practicing one of the means of grace each week, then regathering to share how it went. Christ is alive and desires life your you and for your community. Listening is a powerful human experience. During a colleague’s recent hospitalization, I became newly aware of the difference between a doctor who acts on their own assumptions and one who listens to the patient’s experience. This difference can be annoying. Or it can be the difference between life and death. And it seems to parallel an essential aspect of Lent. Is the purpose of these set aside days between Ash Wednesday and Easter to demonstrate what we think we know God wants, or is it to set aside our accumulated assumptions, no matter how well intentioned, so that we can listen with fresh ears to what God is trying to communicate to us here and now? The prophet Isaiah observes from a God’s eye view that “day after day [God’s people] seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God…” Isaiah 58: 2 God’s experience of humanity makes me deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps I can make up for it by buckling down on my spiritual practices, upping my game. And God responds, in the prophet’s words, “look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast day, a day acceptable to the LORD? Isaiah 58: 3-5 In other words, is Lent about me and my Godward assumptions? Over centuries of practice, Lent has become a season where many of us attempt to prove our spiritual worth to God (and each other). I am able to…. give up chocolate…. cuss less…. pray more often….dedicate my reading to a spiritual classic or thought provoking new inspiration. None of these are bad. Some are very good. But they’re not at the heart of Lent where God yearns to find space within us for authentic encounter. Lent is meant to be a self-emptying opportunity, when I draw near to God in a process that may burn and pull, seeking to dislodge obstacles, excessiveness, the unholy from my life before a truer, purer delight can be born. I find the prophets words deeply challenging when God’s choices and their actual implications for me are made explicit. Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Isaiah 58: 6-7 These are not metaphorical musings. These are evidence of the real desire of God’s heart to build beloved community. These make demands of me, not just my money or my ideas (my, my, my) but how I will spend the days God gives me and with whom. They are the prescription of our Holy Healer. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. Isaiah 58: 8-10 This Lent I will be using the little pocket book, ‘Five Means of Grace: Experience of God’s Love in the Wesleyan Way,” by Elaine A. Heath, as my guide. Not to prove anything to myself or anyone else, but to help me listen to the still small voice that promises: The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Isaiah 58: 11-12 Greetings from the heart of eastern cowboy country, Sebring, Florida. The MidMaine District UMVIM (Volunteers in Mission) team is three days into our contribution to Hurricane Irma recovery. Highland County suffered more damage than any other part of Florida except the Florida Keys. More than 13,000 homes were affected. We’re working on Nirmalla’s, a pretty one-story house surrounded by gardens with plants that we Mainers usually only see in a garden shop. Her family is originally Indian, by way of Guyana, and our construction coordinator, Hank, is from the central Texas cow culture, so we’re having a truly cross-cultural experience. (We have yet to hear the complete story of how Hank’s van was badly damaged by an angry alligator but have been promised details.)
Since 5am Sunday morning our intergenerational crew of 10 has flown 1,600 miles, driven another 2 hours, set up base camp in the beautiful Sebring UMC, been oriented to who we’re living amongst for the week and how Irma disrupted their lives, sanded the drywall mud in 4 rooms, learned to spray wall texture, hung dry wall in one room and cement board in another, taken down a ceiling to get at bad wiring, and miscellaneous carpentry projects. We are sleeping well. And so far we’re well on our way to achieving our three goals: Build community Bring back stories Fix something Each evening we gather for reflection. We’re following themes from “Five Means of Grace, “ by Elaine A Heath. (Highly recommend). Heath’s packet sized guide is in the series that began with “Three Simple Rules.” It expands on Wesley’s ways of “Stating in love with God.” Helping us “consider how each of the five means of grace help us as communities of faith to pray more deeply and live more missionally as followers of Jesus Christ. These means are the ordinary channels that God uses to draw us into a fruitful relationship.” These five means or channels are: 1. Prayer 2. Searching Scripture 3. Receiving the Lord’s Supper 4. Fasting 5. Conferencing (communion, fellowship) We miss you all, can’t wait to share our stories with you when we get home, and THANKYOU for the generous donations to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) that make this recovery effort happen. In God’s Grace, Karen Dear 2018,
Greetings my new friend. This week my mind has turned from fussing over things I wish I’d done last year to producing promises I’d like to make to you, the New Year. Now here you are, 2018, twelve months of pristine possibility. I’m looking forward to our time together. I have a lot of thoughts on how we might spend that time together. They’re pretty ambitious to tell you the truth (more on that soon). The landscape ahead is so enticing and so grand that it seems every moment must count to make the most of the time we’ll have. But that’s where things got tricky with 2017. The weeks flew by and there didn’t seem to be enough hours, enough space, for all that I needed and wanted to do. Already pebbles of possibility are tumbling in to fill the clear future container. What large stones must I put in place now to safeguard space for hopes and dreams I’m carrying into your arms, 2018? What practices will sustain me when interruptions, necessary or nagging, scatter the best intentions of one of our weeks? I confess that one of my own temptations is noodling around, so I can't entirely blame others for the disruption of my best laid plans. Accounting for essential things in each week’s 168 hours, you can plan on us spending about 49 hours sleeping, 7 in devotions, 7 in exercise, 1-3 in communal worship, 7 reading, and 50+ doing the work of the MidMaine District and New England Annual Conference. That means we need careful planning to include family and friends, seeing the beauty in the world, eating, errands, housecleaning, art, gardening…., Thinking about the fullness of time reminds me of God’s generosity in providing the time I need and of my responsibility for choosing how to use it each day. On the mountaintop, Jesus reminded his disciples, "and can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (Matthew 6:27) The answer is clearly, no, I cannot. So, 2018, let’s make the most of the time we have by checking each evening on how well our time was spent, in quality, not just quantity, and by persistently putting the “big things” back on tomorrow’s horizon when the "little things" pile up. Let's notice when little things turn out to be big things and when some things must be let go. Let’s be confident that interruptions we’ll encounter may be practice for the greatest interruption of all, Jesus showing up in surprising ways…you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. (Matthew 24: 44). Will you be my partner rather than my taskmaster this year, 2018, a guide for living and accomplishing what God asks us to instead of the stop watch of an urgent race or an hour glass of limited measure? I hope so, I’m counting on you. In God’s Grace, Karen December 25, 2107
Christmas Day Luke 2:15-20, The Message (MSG) As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over. “Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.” Its Christmas morning. Anticipation climaxes. Who will be the first awake and out of bed? What surprises appeared in the night? Will each person like the gift I give? Will the kids sleep just a little longer? Will what I most hoped for come today? They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the sheepherders were impressed. Often Christmas morning is the time we relax from the urgency of holiday build-up. In that relaxing, if we intend it, holiday can turn to Holy Day. Will there be space in the day of giving, games, and feasting for remembering that today we celebrate the culmination of prophet’s dreams? Imagine God listening in on the conversational sideline: Who is awake? How will they receive the gift I give? Will what I most hope for happen today? Each of us responds uniquely to God’s incredible act of self-giving as Jesus enters our lives. Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they’d been told! Whether you are a quiet “heart treasurer” or someone who lets it lose with a shout, may the presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ fill your life with grace extending into every day to come. This is the gift. This is the hope. This is to whom we awake. Jeff and I look forward each year to holiday letters updating us on what’s happening with friends as far away as Kamakura and as close as across town. This year I’m imaging what a Christmas letter about our MidMaine Church family might convey. Of course, with 66 churches, a camp, an economic ministry, a housing organization, and a prep school in the family, the letter could run a little long! Our letter would remember community bonds built in the aftermath of this year’s windstorm. It would list dozens of MidMaine Churches finding new relationships with their surrounding communities (kids programs, musical events, historical celebrations, clothing give aways, prayer bridges, and FOOD!) It would take us into living rooms where new “class meeting” style groups invite each other into deep discipleship journeys. It would celebrate new pastoral appointments, new staff and volunteers, and pray for those still in process. It would hold in prayer the Magginis family and Salem, Kingfield, and Strong in this first Christmas after Pastor Connie’s death. Our letter would celebrate the birthing of new ministries and the release of old ones in many of our churches. It would wonder at the emergence of new ministry models like East and Center Monmouth’s Shared Lay Ministries Teams and our first visiting sacramental minister. Our letter would remember with gratitude the leaders who have shared their expertise through Resource days. And we would say thank you to the leaders of our new District Leadership Team and Teams for Congregational Development (Rev. Gwyneth Arrison) and Finance (Mr. David McMahon) and hardworking ongoing Teams such as the District Committee on Ministry (Rev. Thom Blackstone), Committee on Lay Servant Ministries (Mrs. Sally Joy), District Events (Rev. Stephen Bascom), Location and Building (Pastor Ned Crockett) and Committee on Superintending (Rev. Jinwoo Chun). What specific stories would you include in our letter? Post your comments or email them to Karen and we’ll do a New Year’s letter! We’d love to have one for each church or ministry. Meanwhile, browse this family photo album, too multitudeness to print. And curl up with a cup of tea to take a look at news of our extended family as we remember those who have died this year. A couple of my “beloveds” make this list, Gwen White and Bishop Felton May, a daughter and son of God who truly carried Christ’s light into dark corners of our world. Any good Christmas letter carries a reminder of why we are who we are and why we do what we do. This weekend, thousands will gather in our spaces to remember the light of God that came into the world over 2,000 years ago and shines brighter each moment that we allow that life and light to live through us. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1: 5. BE our Christmas message this year! In God’s Grace, Karen Ask, “are you ready for Christmas,” and our minds will likely go to a to-do list. For a pastor, it might look something like: ____Gifts bought, wrapped, mailed (or ordered and shipped) ____worship plans in place ____Sermon prep ____family plans ____Church Conference prep ____pastoral visitations on track ____meals planned ____concert/plane/movie tickets in hand ____Appointment update forms ____2018 budget ____etc.….. ____etc.….. ____etc.!!!!! My dear friend Jim was famous for gift shopping at the local 7- 11 after worship on Dec. 24 when he was pastoring churches. If we could enter scripture’s Christmas stories to ask, “are you ready for Christmas?” what might we hear?” The world was more than ready for God’s intervention of mercy and justice, but perhaps not so ready to recognize the form in which it came. Those best prepared were caught off guard by God’s announcements, but adapted to what God’s plan actually looked like when it/he came in human form. There’s Joseph, prepared to enter a conventional marriage of his time and able to adapt to startlingly “bad” news because he carried God’s image of strength, mercy, courage, and compassion in him. There’s Mary, prepared to be a normal young wife, blown away by the angel’s message, but able to adapt because she carried God’s image of hope, justice, and wisdom. There’s that over worked innkeeper, prepared to serve paying guests during the holiday rush and able to find one more warm spot for a young family in extremis because he carried the godly gifts of compassion and hospitality. There are shepherd following their rural routines who adapted to the brilliant message they heard by coming into the city and seeing what God was doing there. No matter how hard we try to prepare for Christmas celebrations, the best parts are often surprises, the anticipated but not foreseen. Let’s get ready by tending to the God gifts in us and others that allow us to recognize, receive and respond to the gifts God is preparing to birth on earth. In God’s Grace, Karen I can’t be the only one whose head threatens to spin at the onslaught of disturbing headlines. (Am I?) Political maneuverings, distorted and abusive relationships, global posturing, cruel violence, name calling all call for our attention. So, I turn to the scripture preparing us for worship and find that, again, the news is full of disasters.
You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. Isaiah 64:5 You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves. Psalm 80: 6 "But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.-Mark 13: 24-25 What’s a preacher to say? Where’s an everyday Jesus follower to look? The day after the July 2016 disaster in Nice, France, when a truck was used as a weapon to mow down innocent pedestrians, NPR recorded a young father leaving the cathedral, “I came because I think I need to be here trying to find hope to live.” He had not been to church in many years, but the cavern unearthed in his spirit sought God in the place he remembered. Even as we enter the holiday season of parties and feasting, our world is full of God hungry people. Some (of us) will try to fill the space with physical satisfactions. Others (of us) will seek emotional fulfillment in the stories, songs, gatherings and memories. Neither healthy physical delights nor healthy emotional experiences are bad, yet neither can fill the God-space at the very center of each of our lives. What’s your favorite distraction/idol from the hunger that only God can satisfy? What would it take to help you/me remember where real satisfaction is found? My dear friend, the news is full of hope and promise. Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. -Isaiah 64: 8 But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name. Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved -Psalm 80: 17-19 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he [the Christ] is near, at the very gates. Mark 13:29 Two days after the massacre in Las Vegas, NPR interviewed a young mother out looking for a way she and her two daughters could help. But the Blood Bank appointments were full, enough snacks had been donated to the shelters… She was awed by, “so many people trying to help.” She tasted the goodness of the Lord, grace pouring out over the pain. Where could she go with the God hunger welling up in her, hunger to reach out and serve? Is your church ready to walk with the God hungry? United Methodist Bishop Janice Huie was speaking about leadership in the changing church, when one pastor confessed, “I was trained not to change lives but to produce church members.” Ouch. If the coming Christmas (Christ’s birth) is to be true good news, we’ll need to be ready to receive each other as more than audiences for the manger scene. We’ll need to be ready to invite one another into God’s salvation story. If you need help doing that, please get in touch with me. And may be this Advent season be preparation at the hands of the potter preparing us cracked pots to be vessels of God’s light and love. Luke 1:5-23 Common English Bible (CEB) 5 During the rule of King Herod of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah……..One day Zechariah was serving as a priest before God because his priestly division was on duty. 9 Following the customs of priestly service, he was chosen by lottery to go into the Lord’s sanctuary and burn incense. Every winter for many years, during the coldest, iciest time of year, I’ve indulged in a few hours with daughters or friends at Soakology, a “foot sanctuary” in Portland, Maine. We settle ourselves into soft comfy chairs and submerge our cold toes in huge pottery bowls of steaming water sprinkled with fragrant minerals and botanicals. The scents of forest, garden herbs, and favorite flowers connect us viscerally with the summer that WILL come again. Silly, I know, and ridiculously extravagant (thus the once a year treat), but that mini respite is the boost that gets me over winter’s hump in its darkest days each year. Sanctuary is a place of refuge or safety, a haven, a port in the storm, a retreat, an oasis. This word comes from the Latin sanctuarium, which is like most words ending in -arium, a container for keeping something in. Think aquarium (fish), terrarium (plants), imaginarium (creativity). I invite you to stop for a moment and think about what a sanctuarium may hold. When we read the Old Testament, we translate the English “sanctuary” from the Hebrew, “qadash”; to consecrate, declare holy, keep the holy, sanctify, set apart, transmit holiness, wholly dedicate. (Strong’s Concordance study) So sanctuary is both a space and a vessel for active process, God’s working out of what we are meant to be. Sanctuary is on many people’s minds this week. We read about the many ways that people are creating sanctuary for veterans-Travis Mills’ Foundation in Rome, and Honor Flights that make space for memories to emerge and honor to be restored. We see seasonal fundraising begin for camps that help children recover from life’s traumas. We have witnessed heartbreaking violence in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, at the hand of one who served beside honorable men and women. Like the poet who wrote Psalm 74, we struggle with how to respond, to understand, to breathe….Memories are triggered of 16th Street Baptist Church and 4 little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963; of Emmanuel Methodist Episcopal Church and its faithful elders in Charleston South Carolina, 2015. When sanctuary is defiled, we cry out to God. We lay out our expectations of what should be. We demand God’s response where ours feels inadequate. In Luke 1: 9 the space called sanctuary is the deepest heart of the Temple of the Lord, ναὸν tou Kupiou. Scholars believe that a priest would serve in the holiest of holies only once or twice in a lifetime. In the sanctuary, Zechariah becomes living sanctuary, carrying the beginning of what will be powerful witness to God’s plan of salvation. He will be John the Baptist’s father. But first, he must be transformed as God’s vessel. This is what we believe and what we practice, that God redeems and transforms the world as God redeems and transforms us, not by our own inclination or power, but by God’s living presence. A sanctuary is a temporary respite in God’s plan for the creation in entirety to be sanctuarium. May our places and practices of sanctuary form us to be catalysts instigating holiness in the world. From Worship in Daily Life, c1999, Discipleship Resources. Oh God, you have come in Jesus Christ, tending to all who are bent in pain, To those separated by disease or bound by death’s power. Come to us now, as tender touch, healing balm, and liberating relief. Urge us to move in new ways; encourage us to embrace the discomforts of becoming whole; Remove from us the fear of relentless pain. As Jesus spoke to so many and touched your hurting people, Come now, speak to us, and touch us. Restore us by your living and amazing grace. Amen. |
Karen L MunsonA pastor and artist, I'm wondering while I'm wandering through God's marvelous creation. Archives
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