For Such A Time as This May 21, 2020 – McBride and Ullom

To the Good Folk of the Palmyra Church of the Brethren,

Looking Ahead to Graduation Sunday!  Last week for graduates to respond!

If you or someone you love is graduating this year (5^th, 8^th or 12^th grades, or post high) we would love for you to be a part of our virtual Graduation Sunday service on June 7! Please take a moment to fill out this short informational form. https://forms.gle/DGLmKDBGHLCbXA5H7

Forms are due this week, no later than Sunday, May 24. Questions about the service may directed to Bethany Hoffer or Rachel Witkovsky.

Joys and Concerns

If you have a joy or concern you would like us to share and pray about, please call, text or email it to me.  If you would like it included in our Sunday Worship sharing and prayer time, please share it with me that week by Friday morning.

Thank You: 

To all who call others to check in on them and share our emails and devotions.

Today’s Devotion:

Today’s devotion was written by Nolan McBride, a Brethren Volunteer Service worker for Youth and Young Adult Ministries.  The prayer was written by Becky Ullon Naugle, the COB Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries.  Nolan’s thoughts and Becky’s prayer were posted today in the COB Mission Advancement email, under the title “Fear and Faith.”  I am thankful for Becky’s permission to share them with you. 

Shalom,                                                                                                             Dennis

Scripture – Psalm 54:3

Through my fear, I trust in God. 

Thoughts:

Nobody at the National Youth Cabinet planning meeting last February guessed just how appropriate the theme we chose for this year’s National Youth Sunday (based on Psalm 56:1-4) would become. As we see rising rates of COVID-19 infection and related death totals on the news, fear is a natural reaction. It would be easy to say: “The Bible tells us not to fear and it will all work out as God wills.” Although this may be true, it is not exactly helpful in the moment.

The word “fear” appears 515 times in the New Revised Standard Version. Skimming through the results on Bible Gateway, many of those refer to fearing God—which itself could be an entire article. But scripture passages like Psalm 56 assure us we need not fear the threats of “mere mortals” when we trust in God.

The psalmist in Psalm 56 describes being persecuted by others. It is attributed to David, who pretended to be insane in order to escape the Philistine king he’d sought refuge from while evading King Saul. What if the danger is not an easily identifiable person or a group, but instead something invisible to the naked eye? In this moment, I am drawn to an image Julian of Norwich recounts in Revelations of Divine Love, the first known book to be written in English by a woman. A visionary, Julian recounts how God:

“Showed by a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the balm of my hand. It was as round as a ball, as it seemed to me. I looked at it with the eyes of my understanding and thought ‘What can this be?’ My question was answered in general terms in this fashion:  ‘It is everything that is made… It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. And in this fashion all things have their being by the grace of God.’”

We are upheld by the love and grace of a God who, as the song many of us learned in childhood goes, has “got the whole world in his hands.” This too shall pass. There are no easy answers. But as God promises us in scripture, and as Jesus assured Julian:  “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Prayer:

Giver of all life, In these days of pandemic, we have a heightened awareness of breath—especially our own and that of others. But today, in precious moments of respite from our current distress, we rejoice in the breath of the Holy Spirit! Jesus breathed into the disciples’ souls and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. We eagerly seek the Holy Spirit’s animating breath. We yearn for this breath to find its way into our souls—individually, and collectively, as a body of present-day disciples. Breathe on us, breath of God; fill us with life anew! Amen.