By Heather Goertzen, resident director, Goshen College Reprinted from Lenten Devotions SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 (NRSV) DEVOTIONAL: Most of my life I have known the protection of the Cloud. I have poignant stories to tell about seas parting for both myself and those I love. I have lived in various communities who drink from (and draw me back to) the Rock who is Christ. Sometimes – even usually – it’s easy to feel caught up in the current of these “in-groups,” all chosen and royal, you “Children of the Most High God” you. This is precisely why I need the Church calendar to bring me to the Savior-waiting season of Advent and today, to the self-excavation of Lent. The fasts and feasts make monotony impossible and make way for both gratitude and humility. So if you think you’re standing – all satiated by the spiritual and tucked into the cozy hug of that cloud – not so quick. Watch your step. In fact, you might already be down. These are the messages of Scripture that startle me from the secure (along with Matt. 21:31 and Rev. 3:17). The plot switches and we, chosen cloud-dwellers, have to take pause. Just being here, at this table, just having the right juice in my chalice may not be enough? Have my hymnsings become more lullaby than worship? Is my service more about me than the Other? What I do when I get up from this table, the places I crawl for comfort, distraction, ego-soothing may reveal more about my gods than I care to let on. So if you think you are standing…
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Melanie Stanley-Soulen pastored Allen-Lee United Methodist Church from 2007 until 2013. Archives
June 2013
Categories
All
|