For Such A Time as This – October 15, 2020 – Dennis Lohr

 To the Good Folk of the Palmyra Church of the Brethren,
 
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 to share our emails and devotions.
 
Today’s Devotion:
I have written today’s devotion.  I hope it encourages you.
 
Shalom,
Dennis
 
Scripture – Lamentations 3:21-23
But this I call to mind,
   and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
   his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.

Thoughts
Have you ever listened to a song for a long time, and then one day you hear something you hadn’t heard before?  I have had the song “No Doubt” on my iPod for a long time.  It was recorded by the Christian rock group Petra in 1995.  But I have had a conflicted response each time I listen to it.  Its strong call to faith has strengthened me in times of struggle, but I believe that doubt is an important part of our faith. 
 
On my way to church this morning, with my iPod on “shuffle play,” the song began again.  Faith -vs- doubt, my mind began to ponder, “What is this song really saying?”  So, I listened closer for the lyrics – and I heard something I had not heard before.  This song is not talking about faith and doubt in terms of belief, at least not like we normally think about believing.  The lyrics point out that “there’s a way of learning from the past that this time of trouble won’t last…”  We are invited to think back to previous struggles and discover that even though they were hard, we survived.  We are invited to ponder those journeys “till you have no more doubt you’ll endure…”  No one hopes for times of struggle, but we can learn and grow from them.  As people of faith, we come to understand that with God’s presence supporting and guiding us, we adapt, we survive, we become stronger, we find new meanings, and we begin to see life through transformed and healed eyes.
 
Remembering that I have survived and grown through previous challenges is helpful to me as I consider the challenges at hand.  Remembering that much of my resilience has come through a sense of God’s presence and the love and care of the faith community, I am strengthened, calmed, and encouraged.  It is through this kind of remembering that our “doubts” about our ability to “endure” and “emerge” are transformed into “no doubt,” into quiet assurance and confidence.
 
The constant refrain in the Old Testament is an invitation to remember previous examples of when God’s faithfulness, presence, love, grace, and strength sustained us… and then to continue living… with faith and hope…
 
Prayer
God of our past, God of our present, and God of our future, thank you for your presence at all times.  May what we choose to remember sustain us for today and give us hope for tomorrow.  Amen.
 
YouTube Link for No Doubt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djgi604GSYA