From Pastor Sarah (weekly reflection for the congregation).
After I write this, I will go into the sanctuary to pray for
our worship over the next three days.
I have the feeling – as I do every year on Maundy Thursday –
that I am longing for something that I can’t even name. Is it wholeness? Peace? Relief? Beauty? It’s all of these
things, and it’s more.
It’s the longing to know that fundamentally, things are going to end up well.
It’s a longing not just for my life but for every one of God’s
hurting, hungry children’s lives. It’s not
just for now but extending far into the future and even into the past. It’s not
just for humans but for all of God’s creation.
I look around and see all that’s broken.
I am unsure that we can ever be made well.
The worship services we’re about to experience allow us to
say, with all lament and distress: this
is not how it should be. They allow us to express our longings to God and
to be utterly real with them. They also allow us to be utterly real with ourselves,
our selfishness and our incapacity to change all that is wrong without and
within. God does not ask us to pretend.
But…here’s the most amazing thing. Once the lament is proclaimed. Once the worst thing ever possible has
happened, what we find on the other side is something more miraculous than we can
ever expect. The longing is met. The joy comes. I’m not there yet, but I know, by God’s
grace, I will be.
I’ll see you in church,
Pastor Sarah
