Sunday reflection: Grace is enough

This morning at Inner City Pastoral Ministry, Farley struck again with a deeply moving song that dovetailed nicely with our reading from the beautiful biblical love letter that is the Song of Songs. It was the one that reminds us how God is the lover of us all, looking through the lattice, seeking us out and reminding us we are beloved, inviting us to "come away, my fair one, my love." 

Grace is with us, especially if we choose to believe that God is a benevolent provider rather than an unforgiving one. Farley slightly changed the street names to fit our part of the country, and invoked Our Lady of the inner city.

No matter where you find yourself or how you feel about yourself, God the Lover reaches out for your hand, offering love and grace. I hope you enjoy this song, Say Grace, by Gretchen Peters...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtdJ4u4rUNg

A vineyard prayer

A vineyard near Taize

O God,
all this talk of vineyards,
wild grapes,
and disastrous tenants!
It's more than I can take in this Sunday.

So I simplify:
It's we who are your vineyard.

You plant us where you want us,
fence us in with your love,
build a watchtower
so you can keep an eye on us,
and dig a wine press
for the harvest of our sorrows and joys.

You, our Tender God, attend to us
with the greatest of care,
and no matter how we produce,
you are jealous for us
because you love us.

In the Song of Songs you say
"Come, my beloved,
  let us go forth into the fields,
  and lodge in the villages;
let us go out early to the vineyards,
  and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
  and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love."

In the face of your tenderness,
how can we help but give our all for you?

+Amen.

God speaks...

Today is the longest, darkest day of the year in the northern part of the world, winter at its height. Where I live, we receive only 7 hours and 28 minutes of daylight. The good news is that from this afternoon on, our daylight begins to lengthen again.
What's really interesting to me is that today the Christian lectionary (the scripture readings chosen for each day of the year) has the following as the Old Testament Reading:

The voice of my beloved!
   Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
   bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle
   or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
   behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
   looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me:
'Arise, my love, my fair one,
   and come away: for now the winter is past,
   The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth;
   the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove
   is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs,
   and the vines are in blossom;
   they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
   and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
   in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face,
   let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
   and your face is lovely.'


                -- Song of Songs 2. 8-14 (NRSV)

These are probably my favourite verses in the entire bible. The first time I came across them, I felt like I was living in the deepest darkness. But here was God speaking to me like a lover; telling me things were going to improve; that light was returning; that spring was coming again. God called me "my love." That really blew me away!

These days, Christianity has a lot of detractors (many of them making pretty good points about how a lot of Christians have lost Jesus' vision to bring good news to the poor, free captives, heal the sick, reach out to the marginalized, etc.) Personally, I think that if more people understood themselves and everyone else to be loved by the God represented in the passage above rather than by a judgmental God, we would make more efforts to care for the forgotten members of society and make Jesus' vision a reality. Acting justly, loving tenderly and walking humbly with God would not be an issue!

If you have a few minutes today, let God call you "my love." See if it doesn't make the depths of winter darkness seem a little less harsh. Here's a link to a little website called Pray As You Go, and if you click on December 21, it will give you today's 12 minute reflection on the reading above.

http://www.pray-as-you-go.org/

Happy Winter Solstice!