The Story of Lydia
As we continue to journey through Acts of the Apostles, Paul expands his missionary journey to Macedonia, now called Greece. It is unfamiliar territory. At this point, the emerging Christian church has been largely local, and now it was going global. The first convert, the first person who would host and nurture Paul’s beloved church in Philippi, was a woman named Lydia. Lydia opens her home to Paul and her hospitality allows the church to thrive. Through this story, we can hear God asking: How do you give and receive hospitality?
Acts 16: 11-15, 40
We (Paul and Silas) set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us. After leaving the prison they went to Lydia’s home; and when they had seen and encouraged the brothers and sisters there, they departed.
The Lack of a Lenten Journey
This blog post was submitted by Larraine Wilson, a new member of Hancock United Church of Christ. Thank you, Larraine, for this beautifully honest piece about your own Lenten journey!
For the last several years, I have been very intentional during Lent. I have chosen a particular practice that has been meaningful for me: memorizing scripture, intentional fasting, daily bible reading, being present and actively participating in church services, returning to a nightly prayer ritual. Doing so has made Easter more exciting each year as the anticipation for it was built by these practices.
This year, I have been lacking a singular practice. It feels like a failure to focus and attention. To to be quite honest, it hasn’t felt very good. I have experience a lot of guilt. I have been worrying about making other non-Lenten things more of a priority than they should be. You see, my partner and I have been preparing for our wedding and the season of Lent has brought with it the most intense days of planning. Assembling and sending invitations, choosing scripture, creating signs, making playlists, painting easels, calling friends, shopping, cross checking lists, attending parties. All of these things making for some very late (and often restless) nights. My time and our energy has been consumed by these “to dos” at the very time of year that I usually focus that energy on renewing my faith. Shame on me, right?
Today, though, God says no. No shame. No guilt. No worries. I had some very clear thoughts that changed my mind in the most amazing way. Today, my head has been filled with the idea of grace. During this journey toward a new beginning (which is EXACTLY the symbolism of Easter), I have learned to be more present, to accept the kindness of others, to try to control things less, to let go of old ideas, to lean on others when I am weak or anxious, to provide for others when I am strong. Aren’t these all lessons of the Lenten journey? To allow God to change old ideas and make room for new ones? Certainly! Today I praise God for the opportunity to realize that I have, indeed, been on a Lenten journey. Just not the one I expected.
Sing!
Psalm 40:1-3
To the leader. Of David. A Psalm. I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
On days like today when the warm sun is beating down on my face; when I can notice crocuses popping up front underneath the once frozen soil; when I can hear the laughter of children playing and when the vegetation that was once dead and brown has suddenly become just a little greener – I just want to sing! Spring carries certain energy that winter cannot supply. Spring brings new life to a once decrepit and dead environment – cold and frozen. Today reminds me of something very real in our Christian liturgical calendar. Similar to Spring, Easter allows new life to enter. We journey throughout the cold, dark and barren season of Lent. During this season we reflect and pray – try and make sense of the isolation we may feel. Yet in the isolation and stark reality of Lent we are promised hope of a new thing. On that Easter Sunday when resurrection conquers death and new life emerges from the bleakness of winter I just want to sing and shout praise unto God!
You are enough.
God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don’t try to end it .
BE Your Note.
I’ll show you how it’s enough.
Go up on the roof at night
in the city of the soul.
Let Everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes!
Sing loud!
-Rumi
Echoes
As a young person hiking in the mountains of my native Colorado, I delighted in discovering canyons perfectly designed for echoing. We’d shout, and then wait for a moment and then hear our own voices returning home to us, bouncing off rock faces and bounding back to our ears in waves one second, two seconds, three seconds later, as if some choir was singing across the canyon’s great divide. I’m now older than I’ve ever been, when I’m in the mountains I tend more to silence, preferring the wind in the pines and the gurgling stream to the sound of my own echoes. But with age has come echoes of a different sort. Nearly everything that happens to me now reminds me of everything like it that has occurred before. · Watching the toddlers at play in our nursery releases the echoes of memory: my own sons, now 26 and 22 at play when words just couldn’t be found to capture the joy of a ball bouncing. · The weeping of a friend in grief over a great loss has the echoing choirs of past sorrows singing from across the great divide. · The folly of a person or a group choosing to do again today what did not work yesterday resonates chords within my heart, reminding me that so has it ever been. I’m reminded, as the echoes sound, of something I once read, whose author I have forgotten: “The past isn’t finished. It isn’t even past.” The echoes of all that has been still sound, and are audible whenever we are mindful of our present experience. Across the great divide come the echoes of what once was, and when we hear them, what is is transformed.
The Heart of the Flower
For the last several days, the comic strip “Zits” has been running two panels with no words, just images. In the first, titled “Memories,” Mom is helping her little boy: coaxing him to take a bite as he sits in his high chair; putting on his small shoes; kissing the top of his head. The second panel in each set gives an update: Mom using a snow shovel to dump food into her voracious teen-aged son; Mom shoving a car-size sneaker out of the middle of the living room where it’s been dumped; Mom standing at the front door stretching her lips out to the car at the curb where her embarrassed son mutters, “Ew.”
I read them every morning and laugh. Then I swallow away the lump in my throat.
Bob Franke is a folk singer and song writer whose works have blessed me for decades, naming the things I’ve guessed at or hoped for, but haven’t quite taken on as my own. The week his “Mariposa” lifted herself out of my I-pod and landed near enough for me to listen to the words. The light calypso tune talks with the butterfly after it struggles from its shroud, wonders what to do, how to feed itself, how to adjust to all the changes it didn’t count on:
Mariposa, poor fluttering thing,
where’s the sweetness
to strengthen your wing?
You have lost all your work-a-day world,
It’s so strange now your wings have unfurled.
Fly higher, still higher,
it’s all so different somehow.
Try higher, still higher, until you see:
Mariposa, the things that you need
are no longer the leaf and the seed.
Lift your lips up, rejoice in this hour,
You were made for the heart of the flower!
God of life and death and rebirth, God of Lenten change, Tears press up behind my eyes until I beat them back, wishing I could taste the leaf and the seed again. I grew strong from them. I knew what to do. In the new life into which you are moving me, give me what I need now. Could it really be the heart of the flower?
4th Week of Lent in Scripture
Acts 8:26-40
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’
Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’
He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the
region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
The face of Jesus
Have you seen him, have you imagined the face of Jesus!
Hundreds of artists have created work in all shapes and sizes presented in The Face of Jesus: An International Exhibit currently featured at the La Salette Shrine in Attleboro, Massachusetts. The show has inspired men and woman of all ages to paint, print, and mold, the image of Jesus, the savior, the risen Christ. An extraordinary exhibit of mail art submitted by contemporary artists from 42 different countries and from forty one US States. More than 800 drawing, paintings and sculptures are featured.
The face of Jesus leaves an indelible imprint…
Walking With Doubt
Facing our limitations, our mortality, Letting Go, Fasting, Preparing to Dedicate ourselves to deeper faith…Doubting. These are the guideposts of the Lenten journey. Letting go of our own certainty…learning to put God and God’s Word at the center of our journey…that is the work of Lent. It is the work of being comfortable with Doubt. We let go of our certainty so that God has room to work. It is not an easy way of life, but it is OUR way of life. We are not called to have all the answers, we are called to act on our faith, even when we are uncertain.
Here is a song that gives voice to the Christian servant who is able to offer themselves to others WITHOUT being certain. Let us find strength in our doubts, O God, that we may rely on your Word and your Work, rather than our own certainty.
Be Still
As a minister, I make my way through life with words. I write them; I speak them; I even dream them, for even in sleep my mind sifts and sorts, seeking the words to say what is in my heart and on my mind. Words, words and more words. Words fill my life, they pile up, they overwhelm, my cup overflows. A shower of words, a cornucopia of words, an offering of words, a flood-tide of words. Words are my friends, my tools, often my very favorite thing.
Which is why, for me at least, silence is the most precious of all the Lenten spiritual disciplines. Yet even as I write in praise of silence, my mind rambles ahead, looking for words, the right words, the perfect words to describe the silence. I look for words to describe the absence of words, until at last I hear the whisper, the still, small voice: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
How shall I describe the silence?
“Shhhhhh. Be still.”
What are the words to convey the power of words unspoken, unthought?
“Shhhhhh. Be still.”
I shall need help, O God!
“Shhhhhh. Be still.”
