February 16, 2022
The seasons are beginning to change. More daylight and more moderate temperatures together indicate the transition from winter to spring. As a church, we find ourselves in the process of transitions as well. We are likewise transitioning from winter to spring, and giving winter its final due for the year by celebrating our “In the Bleak Midwinter” games on Saturday evening, February 26th at 7 pm. This will be an online gathering and details for this “can’t miss/don’t miss” event are below. I look forward to seeing you there.
We are, however, not fully online any longer as we met in our church for worship for the first time in over 6 weeks last Sunday. As we continue to meet in person for worship, we pray that this last Omicron surge may have given this pandemic its final due. Though there is no doubt that this virus will still be around in the months ahead, we hope that it will become much more manageable, allowing us to return to what resembles life before this pandemic. We do this even as we admit this surge has not yet ended, and hope there is no delay in its decline because of Super Bowl gatherings, etc. We will continue to follow the protocols we established for last Sunday until the numbers give us reason to loosen our restrictions. So, for at least one more week, we will have a grab-and-go coffee hour, and pray that practice too may end soon.
We are also experiencing a new season of hope and concern for those who are having or have had medical treatments and procedures. At the same time, it is a season of rejuvenation and celebration as we rejoice with Jo and Corbin at the birth of Evelyn Maeve Portinga Sheffels. All are healthy and well. And yet, it is a season of loss and grief as we mourn the death of Bonita Blake. We are planning to have a memorial service for Bonita once we are able to have receptions again, and are hoping for early March, though no definite plans have been made. In the meantime, now is a season of prayer for the many family and friends of Bonita, along with us in this congregation, who find this is an unexpected and difficult goodbye. For us all, this is a season of prayer for our church in transition.
Given all of these season-like changes, it is only appropriate that our Lenten devotional this year will contain our reflections on the psalms. The psalms are the prayers of the ancient Hebrew people which speak to the wide variety of seasons of life we humans experience—many of which we are now experiencing. This devotional is an opportunity to bring the psalms to life in the ways in which they were intended: giving us words for every season of our lives. In Walter Brueggemann's short, insightful, and now classic text Praying the Psalms, he identifies three characteristics that are essential to the psalms. The first is they are poetry. Reading a psalm as poetry invites reflections on the various meanings it contains, not just a single meaning. Second, because they are poetry, they are able to connect to a variety of human experiences and emotions. Psalms are not doctrinal discourse or sacred history, though at times they contain both. Psalms are unvarnished reflections on human life, from the highest to the lowest, from the best times to the worst times. But third, and central to Brueggemann’s book as indicated in the title, psalms are prayers. Prayers that give words to the depths of our experiences, our feelings, and our faith. Prayers that each Sunday becomes our communal prayer of response to the reading of our first scripture lesson.
There is a reason that the psalms continue to serve as the prayerful language of faith for Jews, Christians, and others after all these years. Because psalms never cease to be relevant. In the psalms, God gifted us with poetic voices to express our human experiences and our faith in God. Thank you for contributing your reflection on a psalm, adding your voice to your psalm’s voice, and offering a rich resource for our Lenten journey this year. Details about this can be found below.
Blessings on you all, whatever seasons of life you may find yourself in now.
Pastor Todd