Psalms
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
Let’s tell the truth. These are stressful and challenging days. If you aren’t feeling some measure of frustration, anxiety, fear, or anger, you haven’t been paying attention. Where will we find the “inner strength” to make it through? That phrase comes from Psalm 138:
On the day I cried out, you answered me.
You encouraged me with inner strength. (Ps 138:3)
This weekend three faithful women are helping me reclaim that inner strength. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I hope you’ll follow the links to hear directly from them.
Centered in Solitude
Gaines-Cirelli
Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli
Last Sunday, my friend, Ginger-Gaines Cirelli, the Senior Pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, preached a beautiful sermon on,“The Only Way Is Through.” She reminded her congregation in the center of the storm that Jesus found the clarity of his identity and mission that sustained him in quiet places of solitude in his relationship with God.
In the hurricane of the headlines, the chatter of online arguments, and the outrageous actions of political power players, we desperately need to find quiet places where we center our minds, hearts, and souls in the “steadfast love and faithfulness” of God that is “greater than everything else.” (Ps 138: 2)
Do What You Can
Diana Butler Bass is a historian, theologian and author who consistently speaks both truth and inspiration to me. In an online conversation last week see pointed out that the purpose of the “shock and awe” plan of the Project 2025 is to make us feel helpless to do anything to stop or slow the flood. It’s certainly working that way for many of us!
Diana Butler Bass
Courtesy Photo
This morning in her Monday Memo from The Cottage, she offered a few “practical things you can do to push back on authoritarianism and strengthen democracy.” They are Watch, Call, Read, and Pray. Although she doesn’t include it here, in other places she also names Connect with others who share our faith and hope for the future. I not only recommend her words to you; I intend to practice them!
Keep Going Deeper
I would not have read these words from Jeremiah if the lectionary had not led me to them, but they are words I need to remember.
Happy are those who trust in the Lord,
who rely on the Lord.
They will be like trees planted by the streams,
whose roots reach down to the water.
They won’t fear drought when it comes;
their leaves will remain green.
They won’t be stressed in the time of drought
or fail to bear fruit.(Jeremiah 17:7-9)
Jeremiah’s words reminded me of words I wrote in a church newsletter more than a decade ago. I shared them with you in 2018 when I told the story of Elizabeth Brownlee. She was “Ibs” to some, “Gager” to many. It was the name bestowed on her by her grandchildren; the name by which her strength, laughter, wisdom and faith were passed on to her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and to the wide circle of their friends. She drew all of us into her life as if we had been born there.
She died at 94, after a long, difficult decline that robbed her, and all of us, of the beauty and vitality of her life. Her grandson called her the “hero” who “taught us to love strongly and to meet the world with curiosity and an open mind.” She was a living example of a person who had found the inner strength to see it through.
I was surprised when her family found my words in her desk with a handwritten note that she wanted them to be included in her memorial service. It’s actually a prayer, rooted in the image in Jeremiah’s words. (It also appears in Psalm 1.)
O life-giving God,
whose power surges through the whole creation,
I want to grow like a tree.
Not like a weed, Lord,
or an overnight kudzu vine,
But patient enough to grow slowly,
but always growing,
always sinking deeper roots,
always stretching wider branches,
always reaching higher into the sky.
Like a tree, Lord,
that can hold its own when a hurricane blows in from the Gulf.
One day, Lord, my tree will fall.
It will have been here long enough.
Even sequoias die.
That’s okay, Lord.
No tree lasts forever.
But may my tree fall because it has lived life fully,
richly, deeply, drawing everything it could from the soil
and giving back life to the rest of creation.
May the fruit of my tree
be a gift of life to others.
Thank you, Lord,
for the soil in which you have planted me.
This is where I want to grow.
Like a tree beside the water.
May God help each of us to find the inner strength that can see us through.
Grace and peace,
Jim
The Rev. James A. Harnish is a retired clergy member of the Florida Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from his blog.