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Rev. Roger's Reflections March 14, 2008 |
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Friday, 14 March 2008 |
"So how is it with your soul?" as John Wesley used to ask his "Holy Club" members. Feeling not so holy after fighting the snow for the past week?
On last Friday, it took me five hours to get from Cleveland to Columbus for the privilege of spending three days snowbound in a downtown hotel (with 250 of my closest friends) as a record 22" fell in one day all around us. We were at the very vortex center of the historic storm. However, it could have been worse - we had heat, lots of food, comfy beds, entertainment and excellent speakers. That's because this was the Ohio gathering of all the local Rotary Club Presidents-elect for the next year. Probably the biggest chuckle was the announcement that one of the keynote speakers coming from Alaska could not make it into Ohio! All of the hotel staff had to stay overnight and were in remarkably good spirits. Come to think of it, we 250 folks did get pretty close, caught in our common dilemma.
No doubt you have stories to tell of overcoming adversity, shoveling out of snowdrifts, helping others and being aided by strangers. I'm sure I don't have to suggest that you should look in on the elderly, infirm and disabled who may live around your neighborhood. When I checked in at home my wife Joan informed me that the furnace had gone out, but church members and neighbors were already offering help. With the aid of our new puppy dog Greta the Schnauzer, and gas fireplace, she stayed warm.
And now here we are, having cancelled church the previous Sunday and feeling overwhelmed with lots of catching up to do. Like snowdrifts of backed-up paperwork, called-off activities, and postponed projects all piled up all around us. We take church and faith fellowship for granted until we cannot go - then it seems more important, doesn't it?
Psalm 51: 6-12NRSV says ".wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." As I drove home from Columbus on Sunday the snow was being removed from downtown streets with dump trucks and bulldozers. The highway was clear but the berms and median looked like a war zone. Cars, trucks, semi-tractor trailers overturned or backwards or upside down and covered with mounds of snow. I'm sure many people's lives feel the same way. How about you?
But the warming trend is coming just in the nick of time, to thaw us out. I remember the blizzard of the 1950s when I was just a toddler growing up in Nashville, Tennessee. As I walked with my Dad to the mailbox I suddenly disappeared beneath the snow that had drifted flat over a deep ditch. I looked up to hear my Father yell down at me, "Hold up your hands!" and Pops pulled me up and out of the overwhelming conditions that threatened to swallow me.
That's what this coming Palm Sunday; Holy Week of Maundy Thursday, Community Good Friday, and Easter Sunday are all about, isn't it? So let's make up for the church that we missed last Sunday and pack the places of worship these next days and weeks. Celebrate our loving God who reached down and pulled us up and out of our overwhelming sin and problems threatening to cover us over.
"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow." (Matthew 28:1-3NRSV).
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