Friday, March 19, 2021
Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent
The Rev. Anne Williamson
The Collect
O God, you have given us the Good News of your abounding love in your Son Jesus Christ: So fill our hearts with thankfulness that we may rejoice to proclaim the good tidings we have received; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Readings: Wisdom 2:1a,12–24, John 7:1–2,10,25–30 & Psalm 34:15–22
My heart is filled with thankfulness. I am so grateful for the love of God which is made manifest in the outpouring of love by the community of St. John’s; in kind words, thoughtful actions, generosity of time, talent and treasure. Despite the many and varied challenges of the last 12 months, I have an abiding sense of gratitude, of thankfulness for the blessings that have been experienced in this pandemic year as well. God’s love cannot be contained in a building or by a pandemic. That is good news!
Despite the challenges, I remain hopeful, confident that God’s love will continue to work in and through God’s people to bring healing and light to God’s world. There is an abiding sense of hope in today’s readings, reminders that we are not on our own; God is with us, Jesus is with us, we have one another. As the psalmist writes ‘ The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, *and his ears are open to their cry...The Lord is near to the brokenhearted *and will save those whose spirits are crushed.’
Prayer has been a comfort, a solace, in this time, for me, as I know it has been for many of you – I am so grateful for all the new prayers I have learned in the last year! As I have mentioned before, praying the Full Serenity Prayer is a daily practice for me, and the first three lines are so well known:
“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
The Godly wisdom of this prayer, and from the reading from the Book of Wisdom, reminds us that we cannot have the serenity or the courage we pray for unless we know which is needed in any given moment. Wisdom gives us the gift of discernment, a gift Jesus had and used well. He was able to speak the truth to those who did not want to hear it, those who sound a lot like the naysayers in our reading from Wisdom, because he embodied Godly wisdom. I pray for the gift of wisdom, to accept what I cannot change with serenity, in quietness and calmness, and to have the courage, in confidence and strength, to change the things I can, and above all, to be a friend of God.
Wisdom is brilliant; she never fades. By those who
love her, she is easily seen; by those who seek her,
she is readily found. She is a breath of God’s power,
an image of God’s goodness, the eternal light and
mirror of God’s glory. Now let Wisdom do all
things, renew all things, and pass into holy souls
everywhere to make them friends of God.Amen.
(Sara Miles in Daily Prayers for All Seasons p.68)