Thursday – February 4, 2021

Reading

So hope for a great sea- change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles.
And cures and healing wells

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
And lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Seamus Heaney

A Word of Hope

They started in the morning—at first just glistening on eyelashes, then, heavy, dropping onto cheeks. Before long, it was a stream of cleansing and release. As texts darted back and forth from friends, we all confessed to tears—some intermittent, some chest-heaving sobs.

Only a few weeks before, we had watched as insurrectionists broke through barriers to lay siege to the nation’s Capitol—some flaunting symbols of white supremacy and anti-semitism, others waving confederate flags. The stars and stripes, no longer proudly hailed, became a weapon to beat a policeman. Talk of assassinating members of Congress and using ropes on officers who provided protection, as well as images of the pack hunting down their prey—was frightening, even traumatizing for those who watched, with its evocation of racist mobs.

But on inauguration day, when the peaceful transfer of power was completed, the tears came. They loosened the protective barriers—erected consciously and unconsciously—for years of onslaughts to dignity, equality, virtue, and faith. They poured out the hearts’ yearning for decency and empathy for others. They fell for renewed promise because that day showed us just enough of what the future can be—”that justice can rise up/ and hope and history rhyme.”

Prayer

Christ Jesus, you weep in us and through us—for all the suffering and dying, for all the injustice and oppression, for all the release and hope. May the miracles of grace break over us like sea-swells and renew us for all the work that is ours to do. Amen.

Devotion Author

Dr. Pat Saxon