Pastor Cara, Puyallup UMC
Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve found myself oscillating between doing really well and being totally overwhelmed. Some days my anxiety is hardly present in my day to day activities, and other days I find it difficult to keep it in check at all. You may feel something similar as it is a normal response to the stress and uncertainty we are all experiencing.
To counteract this cycle, I’ve been trying to follow a modified version of the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office as it is sometimes called. The version I follow comes from the book, The Paraclete Psalter: A Book of Daily Prayer, which offers Psalms and prayers for Lauds (morning prayer), Noon time, Vespers (evening prayer) and Compline (prayer before bed).
One of the lines from the Prayer for the Day this morning struck me as quite applicable for our lives today. It reads “Grant us the grace to endure the sufferings of this present time, to overcome all that seeks to overwhelm us, and to be confident of the glory that shall be revealed in us.” This was a prayer that touched my heart this morning as I find myself in need of this grace. Yet, it was the last phrase that has stuck with me the longest “to be confident of the glory that shall be revealed in us.”
This particular phrase made me think about the disciples. When we left them in Mark, we did not know whether or not the women told the disciples that Jesus rose from the dead. Nevertheless, we believe they must have because everything changed and faith in Jesus rose quite dramatically, as we see in the book of Acts. Before this takes place though, we are informed by the author of Acts that Jesus tells the disciples that they would become his witnesses around the world.
Up until this point, the disciples didn’t always understand what Jesus was trying to convey. These students of Jesus would now become the teachers or witnesses to the rest of the world. I can only imagine what the disciples must have been thinking. Would they know what to say? Do they even remember what Jesus’ main points were? And what exactly did Jesus mean by “witness”? Even while there were many questions that the disciples didn’t have answers to, they did know that their lives were changing. Their roles were changing. They were becoming something new and unknown even to themselves.
This is true for us as a church as well. We see signs that COVID-19 is changing us and our society. We suspect that the way we do church is also going to be transformed from what it was before. At our Church Council meeting last night, it was brought up that people who haven’t engaged in our community before are connecting with our services online. We also have members of our church who are reengaging because of our small groups on Zoom, a video conferencing platform. God is revealing the places and opportunities we have been missing or perhaps even neglecting. As these continue to be revealed, they will change how we will be community together in the future.
The Bishop’s Hymn sung at the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference in 2016.
As the Bishop’s Hymn from our Annual Conference states, “We do not yet know what we will be, but we know, that when God appears, we shall be like God.” While we do not yet know for certain what we shall be like after this experience, I believe that our challenges during this time, will shape us into people who are even more like God.
I invite you to join me in devoting yourselves to prayer so that our hearts will be prepared to reveal God more fully in connecting and inviting others into our community, growing deeper in our faith and wonder of the world, and engaging our world and others in the many new ministries we will develop.
May God grant you grace to overcome everything that might overwhelm you this week.