An Awareness of His Mercies
Hello and Happy Eastertide, Friends!
I don’t know about all of you, but these last few weeks have been full to the brim: exhausting and draining in some ways, but also so full of beauty and joy. This has meant among other things that I have been doing a lot more LIVING and a lot less WRITING.
But I don’t think this is such a bad thing, even if it has meant a bit of an absence in this space. Back in February, Alicia Hamilton over at The Writer’s Cottage wrote about just this:
“If we don’t fill our creative well, it will go dry. And if we aren’t actually living life with our wonderful Creator, how can we hope to create things that are really true, good, and beautiful? In a conversation with a writer friend I said, “Sometimes we just need to let our creative lives lie fallow for a while.” We must take space to learn, rest, and live if we want to sustain true creative work…
We need to experience our lives as they are—colorful, beautiful, sorrowful, rich.”
Read the whole article here:
So that is what I have been doing these past few weeks as I spent time with my mother while she was in town for a week, and walked through Holy Week with my church family, and enjoyed spring break with my children and various friends.
There is a line in the General Thanksgiving that comes at the end of the Morning Prayer service in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer that says: “And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives…”
I’ve always loved that little petition - that our Good Father would give us a deep awareness of His mercies in our lives. And as I have been experiencing the color and richness of life these past few weeks, I have been deeply aware of his mercies.
I am aware of his mercies in the colors and sounds and tastes of spring.
Flowers in bloom. Birdsong and buzzing bees. The taste of the first local strawberries of the season. (Local strawberry season is my favorite.) The beginnings of my first backyard garden in three years. Easter danishes from our favorite local bakery.
I am aware of his mercies in the church community where he has placed our family for this next season.
Our family has church-hopped for various reasons over the past several years. One closed, so we went to another. Then I was needed to go assist a church in an interim situation. You get the idea. When the Lord brought us to Resurrection this past January, I was feeling a little weary of having to start over relationally with another congregation yet again - the third since our beloved former church closed its doors. But my only reflection at the end of our marathon Holy Week was how grateful I am to be a part of this particular community at this particular time. How grateful I am that my teenage children are happy to part of this particular community. And how grateful I am for each experience and connection and lesson learned in each of the churches I have hopped through these past several years and the way each one prepared me to enter into this new context with an even stronger confidence in my calling. I would never have chosen this particular path for myself, but thanks be to God that he knows better than we do.
I am aware of his mercies when He shows up to guide my thoughts and my words as I preach.
Over these past couple of weeks I have had the very great privilege to preach not once, but twice (Good Friday, and then again on the Sunday-after-Easter). I waited a long time for the Lord’s timing to step into this aspect of my calling, so it really has been a joy and a gift to do so now. It is also a lot of hard work. While careful study and good exegesis and reading up on the theological intricacies of a particular passage are all integral parts of the process, at the end of the day I’m finding it comes down to asking the Holy Spirit to guide me in what parts need to be said, and what parts need to be left out. And when the Spirit shows up and carries me along….it is a beautiful thing to participate in.
There are of course many other mercies I could recount, but in the interest of getting this note sent out to you before this entire day slips away from me, I am going to stop here. But I would love to know:
Where have you been aware of his mercies in your life lately?
Until Next Time,
May we - with truly thankful hearts - show forth His praise not only with our lips, but in our lives.
Jen
Bits and Pieces
Reading/Watching/Listening:
The new season of Call the Midwife. I’ve followed this show pretty much from the beginning (we used to watch downloads that someone got from who-knows-where back when we lived in Cameroon!) I love how it illustrates compassion and celebrates life.
Taking Delight:
We spent one of our spring break days last week with dear friends at the Riverwalk in Columbia, SC. Our kids have all essentially grown up together and have maintained our ‘like family’ bond despite the fact that they have moved not once, but twice. Even though they are all teenagers now, it was such a delight to watch them play out on the rocks like they used to on park outings when they were little. (It was also a delight to feed them pizza and root beer and go out for a grown-ups only dinner after our river outing!) Long time friendships are such a gift.
Thinking About:
“But what the outsiders saw was not their worship. It was their habitus. According to Tertullian, the outsiders looked at the Christians and saw them energetically feeding poor people and burying them, caring for boys and girls who lacked property and parents, and being attentive to aged slaves and prisoners. They interpreted these actions as a ‘work of love.’ And they said “Vide, look! How they love one another.” They did not say, “Aude, listen to the Christians’ message”; they did not say, “Lege, read what they write.” Hearing and reading were important, and some early Christians worked to communicate these in ways too. But we must not miss the reality: the pagans said look! Christianity’s truth was visible; it was embodied and enacted by its members.”
~Alan Krieder, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church (61)