Come
let us sing to the LORD, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation. Let
us come before His presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to Him
with psalms. Psalm 95:1-2
My
heart is firmly fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and make melody.
Psalm 37:7
The
LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock! Exalted is the God of my salvation. Therefore I
will extol you among the nations, O LORD, and sing praises to Your name. Psalm
18:46
My
heart is firmly fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
I
will give thanks to You, for You answered me and have become my salvation. This
is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day the LORD has
acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:19-24
My
heart is firmly fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
Prayer:
Holy Father, Creator and sustaining Wisdom of all that is,
both in heaven and on earth, take from me those thoughts, actions and objects
that are hurtful. Give me instead those things that are profitable for me and
all who seek rightly to praise You. I ask this grace in the company of all
believers and through the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who is, with You and
the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
So Mark O’Hagin tells the story
of when he was a little boy, growing up in Tucson. In all of his free moments
he was a shoeshine boy going in and out of the bars on Sixth Avenue with his
little shoeshine box and rags and polish trying to help his momma put food on
the table. And he remembers resting at the corner of Sixth and 17th,
in front of that big house that now belongs to Heather and Dustin and thinking,
“My what a big and beautiful house!”
And Mark and Pauline have had a
rough time of it. Mark got tangled up in drugs and drink and things were not
easy. And yesterday he and she stood up in front of the body and told more of
their story. Many years ago, wow, could it have been almost forty years ago, he
stood in that exact same spot, a drugged out and broken kid with a couple of
kids himself I think, and gave his life to Jesus.
But things didn’t necessarily
get better. At all. Turns out he got hepatitis C and also, well, even though he
and Pauline worked and worked harder than most anyone I know, and tried and
tried with their five kids, things have always been a struggle. With this
hepatitis eating away at his body all the time, sapping his strength and his
energy and his hope. And they went to every doctor, and took every medicine and
went through every treatment and stood on that very same spot and had the Body of
Christ lay hands on him and anoint him with oil and pray for healing and those
tests just kept coming back that he was full of hepatitis. And Mark was getting
nearer and nearer to death, and then it turns out he built their house too
close to the property line and the water line and the City was going to make
him tear it down, and really the past few years have been him desperately
trying to build Pauline a new house over her head before he died. And except
for a few work Saturdays when a bunch of people showed up to saw and hammer and
plaster it has been a slow journey, especially when a lot of the time Mark
couldn’t hardly get out of bed, and when he did, it seems that he was mostly
helping out at the church, or at the neighbors’, or helping the Voelkels roof
the back house.
So he was losing hope. Both of
them were losing hope. And there was one more last chance experimental drug, if
he could get well enough to take it. And just before he stepped into this one
last chance, they ran more blood tests.
And it was gone.
No more hepatitis.
All gone.
The miracle.
Why and when and how, we only
know by the hand of God. The doctor said he had never seen this happen before.
Apparently Mark was a very welcoming host.
And the point of standing up in
front of the church was to talk about His timing. And He is not bound by
yesterday, today and tomorrow. And come
let us sing to the LORD, let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
And the service yesterday was
focused on the Breaking of the Bread service, as the finale of the Why Do We Gather? series.
And before Jesus broke the
bread, He gave thanks.
Before the time of suffering.
Before all that the Passover means is fulfilled. Before the kingdom of God
comes.
Eucharist always
precedes the miracle.
And yesterday I read A
Small Cup of Light, a story told by a Ben Palpant who walked through
unimaginable suffering and a wilderness of despair and came out the other side
rejoicing. A man who used to be a little boy climbing up the trees and throwing
olives at our church so very long ago.
And he had a
dream. And in his dream he felt himself pulled by each hand in two opposing
directions, his beloved wife and children and friends and peers and parents and
siblings pulled on one hand. And off in the distance stood a great and towering
city filled with people he loved.
And he felt
someone pulling his other arm with a dynamically overwhelming force. He knew
his surrender to that presence was only a matter of when, never a matter of if.
He turned my head to see who, or what, pulled on him with such uncontestable
vitality. He saw God, or knew that he had seen Him. He saw neither his face nor
his body, but it felt as though he had seen both. The mystery swallowed him.
All the terror and perplexity of his soul were not eased by that glorious
vision of divinity. It amplified them, devoured by the pervasive,
comprehensive, and incomprehensible presence of God.
In that moment, he
was the happiest he had ever been in his life, about to burst with joy, and
yet, also terrified, brittle like a china cup falling to the ground. In that
moment, he knew what it was to worship the wellspring of all his joys with fear
and trembling.
In that moment, he
knew what it was to simultaneously fear God and call Him “Abba.” He knew that
he was unmade, facing only his dread, his deepest longing.
And this morning the sky billowed with fantastic orange and
purple that shifted into glorious golden streaks across a bright blue sky
before my very eyes.
Prayer: My heart is firmly fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
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