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Lenten Daily Reflection 2020-03-28

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1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly,* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

I can’t really imagine a more important message to hear today than the one of this text. For this reflection, I rewrote the verses to suggest how this message belongs with us this Saturday afternoon, March 28th, in the middle of a pandemic:  

If I speak in the power of governors, world leaders, and politicians, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have medical training, and understand all mysteries of this virus, and if I have all the medicines, vaccines, supplies, so as to remove this illness, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I sacrifice my food or time in quarantine to help others,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient: It recognizes the gift of simplifying right now; it is gentle with our children, family, friends as we all sometimes poorly navigate this difficult time. Love forgives.

Love is kind: It compels us to pray for others, think of others, cry for others

Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant5or rude: Love finds peace with limitations, accepting that we are where we are—quarantined, isolated, or still going outside to go to work—and chooses to find breath, stillness, courage.

It does not insist on its own way: Love releases control, trusting God and inner resilience

it is not irritable or resentful;6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth: Love is genuine, honest, embracing all the parts of ourselves that show up in scary times—the grief, fear, anger, gratitude, panic, hope.  

7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things: 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends: It never ends



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Posted by Missy Trull
in Lenten Daily Reflection

Lenten Daily Reflection 2020-03-27

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Exodus 2:1-22

 

2Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.2The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. 3When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. 7Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’8Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses,*‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out* of the water.’

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. 12He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13When he went out the next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting; and he said to the one who was in the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?’ 14He answered, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known.’ 15When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh. He settled in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well. 16The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17But some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defense and watered their flock. 18When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, ‘How is it that you have come back so soon today?’19They said, ‘An Egyptian helped us against the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock.’ 20He said to his daughters, ‘Where is he? Why did you leave the man? Invite him to break bread.’ 21Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. 22She bore a son, and he named him Gershom; for he said, ‘I have been an alien* residing in a foreign land.’

This story is one I remember well from Sunday School as a child.  As a child,  I'm sure my attention would have been drawn directly to Baby Moses and how his life unfolds.  Now, as a mother of two small children, my thoughts turn to Moses' mother, his biological one that is, whose courageous act saves her baby's life.  How outrageous that she is nursing her baby "for" this other woman, yet how overjoyed she must be that her baby is alive (safe from being killed), that she will be able to take care of him as a baby, and that he will have safety and privilege as he grows up (for a while at least).

It's difficult to comprehend the injustice found throughout this text.  Given the helpless circumstances Moses' mother found herself in, I imagine she must have cherished every moment she had with her baby, knowing that one day she'd have to give him up (again) and bring him to Pharaoh's daughter.  In the present moment I find myself with more time with my two children, 42 hours a week more, to be exact. There are parts of each day where I'm able to cherish and appreciate that time, but often the insanity of trying to work and take care of a one and three year old at the same time gets the best of me and I become frustrated, negative, and overwhelmed. I'm grateful that my family is healthy and that my husband and I have jobs that allow us to work from home.  Our situation is almost best case scenario in today's world.  Still, when I'm going about my day, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture.  It's also easy to beat myself up, but at the end of the day all I can do is try to forgive myself and ask God to forgive me and help me to do better the next day to cherish my two children and my many other blessings.



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Posted by Chelsea Haynes
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Lenten Daily Reflection 2020-03-26

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1 Corinthians 12:12-26

 

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

 

Did someone check my Enneagram before assigning me this passage? We Enneagram Ones (Reformers) have such a hard time accepting the different giftings and roles that make up the Body. My goodness, if only we were all Enneagram Ones, we would have color-coded to-do lists, remember birthdays, and "flatten the COVID-19 curve" so efficiently that we'd be back to taking the subway in no time. Sure, it'd be great! Sometimes. But without other parts of the Body working in different ways as part of a whole, there would also be a lot less patience, a lot less laughter. A lot less grace. A lot less perspective-taking. 

I still struggle to appreciate the different parts of the Body that suffer together, rejoice together. Mostly, I suspect that's because if I don't do something, it doesn't get done at all. I had to put all of that aside when we welcomed our daughter in 2018 and realized appreciate others. Before Elizabeth was born, I'd sorted out a plan that (on paper) allowed me to tackle work, school, and parenthood all at once. It all seemed so perfect, until the first week of the semester when eight-week-old Elizabeth spent two hours with the sitter, inconsolable while I sat in class. It was all I could do not to burst into tears with each incoming text message while pretending to take notes.
 
I was so hard on myself and questioned if any of this was worth doing. Elizabeth would resent me for spending time away from her! I should quit everything! Never leave the house again! Man, during that season I got a foretaste of how miserable it would be if we were all alike. I needed other parts of the Body with the faithfulness to affirm ways in which God had chosen me, specifically, to be Elizabeth's mother, and that He would equip me. I needed others to put into words profound insights about the nature of God and the Church that my post-partum brain could not compose on its own. When I was experiencing so many types of weakness, I didn't need fellow perfectionists with to-do lists to match mine. For once, I appreciated the need to suffer and rejoice together.



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Posted by Stina Dufour

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