The Lord Helps Me

In the Pray as you go App there was a reading from Isaiah 50 which contained this verse:

 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.

That is the message that God keeps giving me over and over.  Trust me, I am helping you. What flows from this thought is: stop worrying, stop trying to control every outcome, stop managing and.....trust me.

I am writing this in my office at Gender Road Christian Church at 2 o clock in the afternoon.  Usually I write this in the morning, but today I got into a longer than usual conversation with Audrey and took my granddaughter Maggie to school and then just drove to church to spend the day here.

We have a worship service at 12:30 and I was helping to plan it and Hannah, our ministerial intern was "preaching."  There is nothing I like better than planning worship which I usually do not get to do here at this church.  But today Pastor John is out of town and Hannah and I were able to work together on it.  I had already arranged for Bobby to sing "Come to Jesus" a Chris Rice song that always brings me to tears. Yesterday I had found a prayer meditation that I liked a lot and wanted to use that and then suggested a Taize song "Jesus, Remember Me."

Sitting here now afterward, I am awed by the service that came together.  The songs created a meditative spirit in the sanctuary and my reading was essentially about letting go and trusting God.  Hannah ended up doing a lectio divina in which she read the scripture (John 3: 14-21) five times.  I found the whole thing to be extremely moving.   I keep reading, teaching and living this truth - God is love  - which is lived out in this: The Lord Helps Me.  I don't know how to describe how I feel at times guided by God - to find resources, to speak, to listen, to keep my mouth shut, to trust . 

One of the verses of today's text is the familiar John 3:16 -" For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life."   In Bible study yesterday we talked about how the word "believe" here could be better translated "trusts in."  It is not an intellectual belief - but a trusting God with our life - believing that God is our helper, that God is on our side, that God loves us.

And so, on this afternoon I sit in gratitude for the Word of God and the people of God and the spirit of God at work in my life and in this world.

Amen

Here is the reading from today

Blessing in the Shape of a Cross

Press this blessing
into your palms—
right, left—
and you will see
how it leaves its mark,

how it imprints itself
into your skin,
how the lines of it
meet
and cross

as if signaling you
to the treasure
that has been in
your grasp
all along.

Except that these riches
you will count
not by what you hold
but by what you release,
by what you lose,
by what falls from
your open hands.

—Jan Richardson

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