FEATHER: Almighty, today we the children of your creation lift our prayers of thanksgiving, for your faithfulness, grace and mercy. In our brokenness we see only as deep as the mirror before us allows. We hesitate when we are called to go forth, we are easily distracted and we divide more than we mend. Yet you see us through the wide lens of your love and peace. Your faithfulness remains so that you walk with us in every step of the journey. For this we lift the prayer of praise, and we ask your guiding Spirit to bless us that we might go this day with clear eyes, open hearts and tongues of truth. This we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
SAGE: One of the great blessings and challenges in my ministry as national Indigenous Anglican archbishop is travelling. It’s a blessing because in my journeys I get to see the diversity and beauty of this vast land and its people; it’s a challenge because it means being away from home and kin. But the blessing always outweighs the challenge! As I look out my airplane window, I marvel at the surreal vision revealed before me. The clouds create vast forms of faraway landscapes, with ever-shifting cities taking shape in the soft mountains of vapor reaching to the blue beyond blue. All the while I acknowledge that back on the ground is the reality of the human condition—the joys and tears, need and mercies, brokenness and healing, life and death. Sometimes it seems that the beauty and function of the Almighty’s creation are but a whisper in the storm of humanity. Amidst the storm, Creator offers community, connection and healing beyond understanding, but too often we in our humanity rush around without seeing, so afraid of losing the moment that we do not appreciate it; we reach for more, only for it to leave our grasp and our circle.
The journey of life and faith is the great gift given to all; life is meant to be full, glorious and blessed. Faith is the seeking of deep truth beyond truth and grace beyond comprehension. Binding it all is the transformative love revealed through the sacrificial love of Christ, who in obedience died once and for all that we might come into communion with the Father and be one in peace. But just as we need to step away from the mirror of self and immediacy to see the beauty that is all around, in all creation, we also need to step away to glimpse the greater glory of the Creator. Maybe in so doing we too will then bend the knee in humility and prayer, embracing the present, embracing the other beside us and going forward in Christ and peace. May love and peace go with and before you, may you be blessed to be a blessing to others, and may you always rise up out of the valley of darkness to soar in the beauty of God the Creator. Amen.
