And you could see that today. People don't have water. They don't have diapers for kids. They have nothing.

Remember me according to Your love and for the sake of Your goodness, Oh LORD. Psalm 25:2

Be still, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

The gift of liturgy is that it helps us hear less of our own little voices and more of God’s still, small voice. It leads away from self and points us toward the community of God. God is a plurality of oneness. God has “lived in community” from eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God as Trinity is the core reality of the universe, and that means that the core of reality is community. -Claiborne

My own little voice is what I am trying to silence. And it is a lot easier to do it painting Somali refugee children faces like clowns and pumpkins and butterflies. And harder to do it walking Sabino Canyon alone, even if you keep singing Your love oh Lord reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness stretches to the sky every time you sense yourself sliding off track.

We must connect our prayers to the rest of God’s children throughout the world and through all time and space, people who are reading the same Scriptures, singing the same songs, praying the same prayers, and grafting their lines into the same old story of a God who is forming a people who are set apart from the world to be God’s light and to show the world what a society of love looks like.
-Claiborne

And Amy did a little exercise before we went over to the Oasis apartment complex. We ripped a piece of paper into sixteen pieces. On four squares we wrote Four things we liked to do, on four more we wrote things we were thankful for, then four favorite people, and lastly four roles that we play, like teacher, mother, wife and friend. Of course, the first step was to select one square from each pile and rip it up and throw it on the floor. Then we had to randomly select one from each pile and rip it up and throw it on floor without peeking as to what it was that we lost. Then Amy and her friend skipped around the circle and grabbed or didn’t grab handfuls of paper slips and rip them up and throw them up in the air. And some people lost them all, some one, some, like me, lost nothing more. And these are our refugees and their loss.

And this morning on my way out to Sabino Canyon, NPR had a story told by a reporter who was visiting this tiny little town in Turkey one mile from the Syrian border, when overnight tens of thousands descend onto the town, fleeing ISIS. And it costs 35 million dollars a week to feed Syrian refugees and the WFP is running out of money. And when a food truck is delivering food from Damascus, they are stopped at more than forty or fifty checkpoints.

And all of this puts Tucson potholes in shameful perspective.

Prayer: Lord, teach us to pray without ceasing, even when words escape us, and to work toward your kingdom, even when we cannot see it. Amen.