June 19

Beloved of Good Shepherd Church

Grace to you and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord!

Summer is here! I hope you find time for rest, relaxation, and fun with the people you love in these hot, sunny summer months. We don’t believe in “low Sundays” here at Good Shepherd. There is always something going on at your church! Come join us for worship this Sunday and bring a friend! All are welcome!

There is a certain tension in the atmosphere because while that first paragraph is certainly true and relevant for many there is also a lot of struggle, violence, and discord in the world right now making it hard to relax and have fun. My heart breaks over the wars, rough talk, and vitriolic arguments that burn steadily in the human community. Two Jewish mystics come to my mind as my despairing heart hopes for peace. The first is the apostle Paul. In his Galatians letter he wrote to the followers of Jesus, Remember “All of you are one in Christ Jesus. There is no longer Jew and Greek, there is no longer male and female, there is no longer slave and free. All of you are one.” My prayer is that God will give all his children eyes to see our union with him and each other in love. 

The other mystic who comes to mind is Etty Hillesum. In a very difficult and violent time in history she wrote this, “Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek to be avenged on all German mothers, for they, too, sorrow at this very moment for their slain and murdered sons. Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his/her grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrows will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.” Etty’s call to make space for our grief so that we are not incubators for hatred is remarkable given the fact that she was soon to be a victim of the Nazis. My prayer is that God would give all his children the courage and clarity of Etty, so that we might all see like her and know that “the only way to make the world more habitable again is through love that Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the 13th chapter of his first letter.” That love, as you know, is the patient, endless, non-violent, sacrificial love of Jesus.

Remember this always - God loves you, and I love you too!

Love is all,

Hendree+