A Breath Prayer for Presence
Inhale: “God, you are here.”
Exhale: “God, I am here.”
This is the breath prayer that helped sustain me as my brother and I did our best to create a container around our parents in the last week of my dad’s life and now in the first week of my mom’s life without him here. The importance of embracing faith in life’s fragile moments has never been lost on me as a pastor, as a mom, as a widow, as a daughter, as a friend, and as a human.
The Circle of Life
My niece is scheduled for a planned C-section today, All Saints’ Day. Mom’s great-granddaughter. As I write this to you, I am on their couch watching my mom crochet a baby blanket for this new life coming to our family at the very moment that her tears are still near. The circle of life is death and birth and birth and death. And friends, this IS life. This is the human condition. This is the reality of our fragility, and this is faith. These are the moments when we cry out to God, “God, you are here and God, I am here.”
A comment from my brother-in-law last week, “I miss Dad. It’s been years, and yet it just hit me again the other day.” Who among us doesn’t have moments like that? Who isn’t caught off guard by a song, or a smell, or something we can’t even see? This is love, and even at those moments, God is here, and we are here.
Too often we want theology and faith to make sense. We want it to explain and somehow “fix” our realities. We want it to be logical and linear. But I wonder, is love ever logical? Is love linear? My experience suggests that it is not. Love just is. And God is love. And God creates us to be in a community to share love and to experience holy love together.
The Daily Trust of Faith
Faith is the daily trust that love is love is love and God is love. Faith is the daily trust that love is love is love and God is right here loving us. And faith is the daily trust that we are here in this love with God. God is the tether to love we can’t understand or fully grasp. God is the tether to that great communion of saints that continues to cheer us on to believe and to trust and to know that while we now see through a mirror dimly, one day we will see even as we are seen and know even as we are known.
Faith doesn’t make life easy. Faith doesn’t provide a free pass from pain. Faith is a decision. It is a decision to trust in the love of God and God’s faithful presence with us and all of humankind even if we can’t explain any of it. Faith doesn’t always make sense and yet, I would submit to you, faith is everything!
Breathe Through Life’s Seasons
So, my friends, I encourage you to show up. Come to worship, come to Theology Pub, pop onto a Zoom meeting, drop by the office, call one another, call me.
Show up for yourselves and for each other. Know that God didn’t create you to be alone. Together, let us all stand in witness to what God might be doing in our midst.
I personally know that I experienced the love of God, sitting in a brewpub, surrounded by fellow believers, on a pretty hard day, and when I drove home my prayers were of gratitude.
And, as always, I am here for you and with you.
Grace and Peace,
Leigh
