As Jay mentioned last week, we are planning on an outdoor service on Sunday, July 26th. Space will be limited, so we will have an online registration form starting next week, so be on the look out for that.
Here are some initial details:
Initially we’ll meet outside on the back lot of grass at Central Lutheran.
We plan to meet in the morning, and the service will be shorter in length to accommodate the heat
Limited numbers to allow for social distancing (you will register ahead of time)
Eucharistic: we will safely celebrate Holy Communion
Here is a brief mediation on a prayer that has been encouraging/challenging me the last few days.
“Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another, until the disciplines and testing of these days are ended, and you again give peace in our time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
These words come from a collect in the back of the new 2019 version of the Book of Common Prayer. I love these topical and seasonal prayers because they so often condense (or collect) profound thoughts into a few words and enable me to pray things it might not otherwise occur to me pray.
Here is the full prayer:
In times of social conflict or distress
“Increase, O God, the spirit of neighborliness among us, that
in peril we may uphold one another, in suffering tend to one another, and in homelessness, loneliness, or exile befriend one another. Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another, until the disciplines and testing of these days are ended, and you again give peace in our time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
I want you to reflect on the word neighborliness for a moment. It’s a hard word to wrap your mouth around, and it might seem a bit abstract, but it points to the second of the two great commandments, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We might have a lot of questions right now about what it means to love our neighbor. Or we might find ourselves asking amid all the “disciplines and testing of these days” the question a lawyer once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” In response Jesus tells the ever famous and ever relevant story of the Good Samaritan. After he tells the story, Jesus asks a probing question of his own—“Who proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”
Jesus, who is almost never abstract, sums up the spirit of neighborliness in that brilliant phrase, proved to be a neighbor, so I have taken that as a short hand version of the prayer, “Lord God, help me to prove to be a neighbor today."
(I mentioned this prayer in an Instagram post earlier this week, but I wanted to share it here as well, so if you don’t already follow us on social media, you should start! During the past few months, we’ve been posting something almost every day.)
Chris+