Daily Worship

Even in the darkness

Liz Crumlish March 06, 2021 0 2
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John 12: 24 (NRSVA)

24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

In the darkness we have known

 

we give thanks for gifts of light

 

In a season that held great loss we give thanks

 

for relationships strengthened

 

for love borne out in myriad ways that made a difference

 

For all the signs of God in those we encountered

 

those who held out faith when our own wavered

 

and those for whom we were enabled to be companions on the way

 

We give thanks for the rediscovery

 

of gifts we had laid aside

 

forgotten in their familiarity

 

that became precious once more

 

as they became harder to reach and all the more longed for

 

And in our thanksgiving

 

we embrace the wisdom revealed

 

that, hopefully we won’t let go so easily

 

as we forge a new future

 

diminished by loss

 

yet strengthened by shared experience

 

that reminds us

 

that love is stronger than death

 

and light penetrates darkness

 

and that there is no place

 

that takes us beyond God’s reach.

 

May our reflection

 

continue to enable insight

 

changing the way we embrace the future

 

in the knowledge that we are held

 

always in the love and light of God

 

and that, in every darkness, God is at work.

Lent Disciplines

What practices in church life have to die in order to let new things flourish?