Monday - June 3, 2024

READING "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." -Jane Goodall  WORDS OF HOPE I have spent the last few weeks recovering from surgery. I thought I’d take this time to catch up on some reading, but instead I have been binge watching a four-season series on Netflix. It is a Canadian “romantic drama” that is filled with emotional relationships, medical situations, and the beautiful scenery of Nova Scotia. Much of the drama that defines the individual characters and the relationships between them centers on ideas such as being true to yourself, being honest, accepting responsibility for past actions, and seeking reconciliation. Themes of compassion, forgiveness, trust, prayer, and unconditional love also are woven throughout the story, which takes place in a small town in Nova Scotia. We meet and get to know the characters in community gathering spaces—a local diner, the town fire station, a hospital, individual homes, and the primary setting of a family-owned campground and its general store. The town, especially the campground, is a refuge for broken and hurting souls, for those seeking respite and rebirth, for people starting over with the hope of finding wholeness. I was almost through watching the entire first season when it dawned on me there was no church that was a part of this community, despite the fact that I felt it to be deeply spiritual. Paul wrote the following in his letter to the Romans (12:9-18) Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. This is what the drama I watched was about, without ever mentioning religion or being in “a church.” It reminds me that being the church is not about what happens in the walls of a specific building on Sunday mornings. We are the church and we carry with us at all times the responsibility for the work of the church, work that is a 24/7 job. We don’t have to mention God or Jesus or quote Bible passages while on the job. Our actions will do that for us. We join together on Sunday mornings to be nourished so that we are equipped to do this work. Often times our group of friends would go to brunch after being in church on Sunday mornings. Someone would say or do something that was not reflective of how we are called to live as followers of Christ. The rest of us would respond with a chorus of, “Wow! Church didn’t even last fifteen minutes today!” It was said as a joke, sort of. But hearing those words does make one stop and think. Am I being the church that Jesus wants me to be? PRAYER Loving Creator, I ask for your blessing upon my efforts to serve others. May my actions be guided by your love and motivated by a genuine desire to make a difference in the lives of those around me. Amen DEVOTION AUTHOR Kris Baker Order of St. Francis and St. Clare

SCRIPTURE 1 Corinthians 13.13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. WORDS OF HOPE How do you feel when you lose something important? I have different levels of replacement value that I put on different things. For family album pictures and things regarding the people I love among the highest valued things… Those irreplaceable objects of my affection. It’s almost like losing a memory of who I am; my origin. There are other things like work related items such as my calendar that I lost recently. I’m a hybrid old school/new school. I love to have a paper calendar back up, while also using a Google Calendar that can remind me of things I may clearly forget. But since I was a young child I remember looking feverishly for things that I had lost. Some things I never found again and by default would either forget about them or choose to let them go. It’s always difficult choosing to let go of a personal treasure. We all know what our particular feelings of loss are regarding material value versus people, friendships, and relationships. I don’t take losing the people I care about very lightly. There are so many friendships and relationships that I refuse to let go of, especially for loved ones that have passed. I have come to this point in my life in my mid-sixties, when I have begun categorizing and bullet pointing a list of those various losses and sometimes gains. Even when relationships come came to a close, I couldn’t help but think, like the eternal optimist I am, about cherishing the good and happy memories, before we ended our time together. I know more realistically sometimes it’s more difficult to move on and let go, but I know I’m not one of those people. It takes a lot for me to give up all hope. A lot. I think about what that means in the bigger picture… Maybe that’s just a taste of Jesus’ example of unconditional love. But I know in my heart, the creator of the universe does not consider any microbe of creation as “OK to lose”. That goes for you and me and all the things that exist in the space between spaces. And the only way I can justify believing that is this crazy little thing called love, that drive within us that the Apostle Paul calls the greatest. What will you do today to lose the negative, the toxic, and the things that simply don’t serve your time well? In the same regard what are the things that continue to bear fruit in your life, bring you joy, and lead you to practicing your greatest love? PRAYER May we have the faith to go forward into the ends and beginnings of life, always in hope and in love, remembering the assurance of your guidance along the way. Amen DEVOTION AUTHOR Charlie Rose  Order of St. Francis and St. Clare

SCRIPTURE  Acts 7:35-42 It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, “Who made you a ruler and a judge?” and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, “God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up.” He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our ancestors, and he received living oracles to give to us. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, “Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.” At that time they made a golden calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands. But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? No; you took along the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’ WORDS OF HOPE In this passage, Stephen is reminding a crowd in Jerusalem of how their ancestors had given up on Moses after he had disappeared on the mountain. They called upon Aaron to make a God for them to worship and to follow. Since this comes following Pentecost, Stephen’s implication, (and in the next verse, his direct accusation), is that the people to whom he is speaking have essentially done the same thing with the power of the Holy Spirit who has come among them. We think of ourselves as beyond that kind of idol worship that the Israelites fell into in the time of Moses and again at this juncture, in the new life that Jesus and the Holy Spirit have brought. How often, however, do we create idols, ideas or things that we “worship” and forget the God who guides us? How often do we unconsciously think God has abandoned us and we replace our worship of God with some other focus? We, perhaps, do not think of it in that way. But whenever we overlook or ignore the call of God in our lives for anything of this world; we have created an idol. And while we tend to think of these idols as physical, like the golden calf or money in our time, we can create idols of most anything. Anytime anything stands between us and God, or in some way replaces God; we have created an idol. It might be technology; it might be the busy times of our day; it might even be Family. So, for our reflection today, we should take some time to stop whatever we are doing, close off all noise, and external stimulation and take a moment to simply sit with God. This too is a form of worship. And hopefully it will bring God into the focus of our worship. PRAYER Gracious God be with us always so that we can worship you in fullness. Forgive us when we doubt you and replace you in our hearts and our minds with idols of our own creation. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Weber Baker. Order of Saint Francis and Saint Clare

SCRIPTURE Gensis 13:18 Then Abram moved his tent and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and there he built an altar to God. Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. Gensis 18:1 WORDS OF HOPE I used to say—only half-jokingly—that I hoped I died before she did. Over the years our relationship had become, well, intimate in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I’d always loved her long-limbed beauty, the way her branches stretched across space as if she were yearning for the light. But I think that it was after the arborist broke the news that she had a disease that would eventually take her down that my heart opened to her even more deeply. I ordered special organic nutrients to be injected into the soil several times a year to bolster her system. As with any other loved one, I would try to extend her life as long as I could. Greeting her every morning as Sage and I go for our walk, I speak my love and gratitude for her strength and beauty. She has endured for 65 years through thunder storms with strong winds, lashing rains, and even hail. Sometimes I slide my palm over her rough bark and tousle the leafy green clusters which wave their greeting. And oh, how her fall glory electrifies! Perhaps my Irish heritage imbued me with the blood of Druids, a people for whom the great oaks are sacred sanctuaries. Last week while talking to a neighbor, I heard a lightening-scale crack and thunderous thud as the fissure in her massive trunk split open and she crashed to the ground. When we arrived at the house, the great sheltering canopy of Grandmother Red Oak lay splayed and broken all over the yard. That night, after a skilled tree removal person had been secured, grief came. Tears fell and memories surfaced—like the summer a mother owl and her four fledglings held vigil in her branches at night. At dusk I walked among the beautiful wreckage and prayed and spoke to her. Tears washed my cheeks again in the morning while Isidoro and his son set about their work. I asked him if he would cut me a few pieces to keep. He did not think that was foolish and produced strong, solid, beautifully grained sections.  Sometime in the second day of my grief, I thought: This is not just my loss. The Mississippi Kites who have been perching in some bare branches before their morning flight have had to relocate. The blue jays who year after year raise their families there have lost their home—and the squirrels who rest in the heat of the day on her broad branches and scramble about in play and harvest her acorns for food are displaced. All have lost something. Even the young cotton tail who finds shade and water underneath her looks confused as she sits on the edge of the yard and peers into a transformed landscape. As I pray for these creatures, the lessons of adaptability and resilience come to mind, teaching me as well. And I take some comfort in the one remaining section of Grandmother that is still alive and green and in the hope that even after the terrible breaking she will thrive. A new sitting area graces the front yard—centered around the large oak sections cut for me, and now holding aloe vera and summery petunia, with small agaves at the base. It will be a kind of outdoor altar for the sacred oak, for all the beauty and strength and grace and blessing she brought. At the thought of the welcome this new setting offers, I smile in gratitude. Receive this blessing: “Blessed are the ones who trust in the LORD, whose confidence is in God. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. They do not fear when heat comes; their leaves are always green.” Jeremiah 7-8 adapted DEVOTION AUTHOR Dr. Pat Saxon

SCRIPTURE James 1. 2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. WORDS OF HOPE God’s Kindness It is in the human experience that we often live without knowing all the facts. The future, God’s purpose for our lives, and the choices that we should make are all at times things shrouded in mystery. Yet, without knowing, somehow, we live without this knowledge every day. There are times, however, when our questions and desires for the answers burn within our hearts so much that it consumes our every waking thought. In these moments, it is easy for us to be dissatisfied with God. At times, we would rather relieve the stress of our minds by following the instructions of people who claim to have the answers. With no clear direction or clarity, how could we possibly have peace of mind? Instead of looking for the sun to shine every day, what if we became comfortable when it rains? In a perfect world the weather would never pose any threat. The temperature would always be comfortable and white puffy clouds would offer us plenty of shade. It is a fact that most people thrive on days like this, but when the weather changes unexpectedly and we become inconvenienced by it, we become uncomfortable. We look to God to give us a good weather report but would be uncomfortable if God gave us a bad one. We have not learned how to be comfortable when the forecasts for our lives show us failing, making mistakes, and struggling. God does not give us all the answers, and by not doing so, does us a great kindness. How many of us would enter a competition that we knew was going to be a great struggle with many mistakes made, and that would eventually end in our failure? Most of us would not see the point in entering a race that we had no chance of winning. However, even when we fail, we gain experience, and with experience, knowledge, and with knowledge, understanding, and with understanding we gain the ability to be wise. If God told us everything, then we would avoid hard times, the very times in our lives which builds our character. I would rather not know and struggle, than to know how to avoid the very things which are meant to grow me. PRAYER Creator God, Help us to trust You. Remind us of Your love and of Your desire to prosper us. We do not know the way in which we should go, but we know that You are guiding us to where we should be. Lord, grow our faith. In the fiery trials, we know that You will fashion us into pure gold. Help us to believe when we do not see and to have peace in You, our mighty God. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Jonathon McClellan Order of St. Francis and St. Clare