Friday, May 21, 2021
Woods, Meadow, Mountains or Plain
We are Always Hungry in the Wilderness
Nehemiah 1:6
Lord, may your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned.
James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
Words of Grace For Today
The smoke at first curls and twists around and down to the ground as the fire starts to burn. The song birds’ melodies from the woods mix with the loon wails across the water. A distant dog barks always hungry that one. Then as the fire develops coals the hotter smoke, still grey and white, takes a straighter path upwards and away. Seagulls in a flock scream and screech across the meadow. The distant dog barks always hungry that one. Two solo geese fly over honking, their mate on the nest keeping an egg, maybe two or more, warm in the sub-zero pre-sunrise cold. Without notice or care the smoke turns transparent, so hot the smoke particles become invisible, until six feet up from the homemade chimney rain cap it cools to become visible grey again. In the distance the dog still barks, always hungry that one.
Our voices rise to God, sometimes in melodies sweet with praise, sometimes sorrowful wails, sometimes honking, calling attention to ourselves (at our best it is not just hubris but to provide a tiny bit of safety for the vulnerable, as the parent ducks and geese do), sometimes in screams and screeches desperate it seems though it too often is not so, and sometimes like smoke our voices rise to God full of all that our lives have consumed, too cool to rise, hot and clouded, or searing hot and invisible.
Always our voices rise to God because we are hungry, always hungry … for the bread of life, the living water, the light of the universe … for love
…
and we do not understand how to receive all that is already provided to us
…
so we are always hungry.
Then without notice or care God’s Grace permeates our living, we see the awesome wonders of God’s Love and will for us and all creation and
…
we are exposed,
so exposed,
exposed
as the sinners, the unfit creatures in a marvellous creation, that we are.
Our response can only be to lift our voices to God with Nehemiah:
Lord, may your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of [fill in your people], confessing the sins of the people of [fill in your people], which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned.
We cannot confess other’s sins. We confess the sins in which we have participated with others and benefited from, namely the sins of our people of [fill in your people]. We acknowledge our shared sins, and our family sins … and our own personal sins.
This is the first step of becoming aware of God, yet once again, as we traverse our days on the side of God’s holy mountains, in God’s holy plains, and in God’s holy woods and wildernesses.
Confession brings healing so that we then are ready to do what we are called to do,
God’s work bringing abundant life to all people.
And our voices rise to God once again in melodies disparate and haunting … in profound thanks
for all God has provided for us.