Friday, April 3, 2020
The Rev. Rob Stevens
The Collect
O Lord, you relieve our necessity out of the abundance of your great riches: Grant that we may accept with joy the salvation you bestow, and manifest it to all the world by the quality of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Reading
Psalm 18:1–7
1 I love you, O Lord my strength, *
O Lord my stronghold, my crag, and my haven.
2 My God, my rock in whom I put my trust, *
my shield, the horn of my salvation, and my refuge;
you are worthy of praise.
3 I will call upon the Lord, *
and so shall I be saved from my enemies.
4 The breakers of death rolled over me, *
and the torrents of oblivion made me afraid.
5 The cords of hell entangled me, *
and the snares of death were set for me.
6 I called upon the Lord in my distress *
and cried out to my God for help.
7 He heard my voice from his heavenly dwelling; *
my cry of anguish came to his ears.
Reflection
Nothing feeds gratitude like a 20-hour drive from sunny Florida to chilly New Hampshire during a pandemic to end your sabbatical. You may think that I am being snarky or sarcastic, but I am not. Leaving my parents who I had just stayed a month (A MONTH!) with in FL, and looking at my sleepy traveling crew who included my wife, daughter, son and son’s girlfriend piled into our very full car at 4:45am Wednesday morning my heart was full to the brim. Yes, there is a pandemic, yes, just about every plan Jennifer and I had for our sabbatical did not turn out remotely like we thought. Yes, I am ending my sabbatical a month early only to return to a community that I cannot be with physically…the list goes on. However, I am grateful. I am grateful for the time with family. I am grateful to have a community to come home to, grateful to have the opportunity to try to figure how to BE church in this strange moment in time. Yes, gratitude takes practice, but sometimes, just like grace, it surprises you.
Arriving in Portsmouth in the wee hours of Thursday morning with a very road weary family I smiled…we were “Home”…There is a wonderful song my son shared with me a few years ago by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (great band name huh?). The name of it is appropriately “Home” and it is a love song. I found myself singing it as I exited 95 onto Portsmouth Ave. “Home, let me come home. Home is wherever I am with you.” The interesting thing I noticed as I sang was that in the midst of all the chaos, fear and yes, real suffering that is going on right now, I was smiling and was filled with gratitude as I realized again that Home has less to do with place and more to do with people, love and remembering who we are.
The Psalm above describes a time of chaos and upheaval and yet the psalmists leans into their identity as the beloved of God and rests and delights in the knowledge that even, perhaps especially, when times are scary and difficult, our home with God is already prepared. God is ready to listen, ready to see, ready to love us with a love beyond our dreams. I invite you, during this strange time of isolation, to lean into that Home with God. Now, more than ever, we and the world need to remember that God, Love and Home are still present to us, and we can share that with good news with others. I look forward to “seeing” you Sunday!