Dear Risen Lord disciples:
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Over the weekend in our neck of the woods we experienced rain on a nearly-noachic scale. Well, obviously that’s a bit hyperbolic. There can’t be forty days of rain in a single day. But it felt like it. Particularly as I stood in our basement, remembering last year at about this same time, when the rain came even longer and fiercer than this past weekend (well, it WAS 2020 back then, after all…). I had watched water flow in from the bottom of the basement walls and over the top of the sump pump well. With our yard flooded and the drains overwhelmed, there was nowhere else for the water to go. Fortunately, a friend with a power vac, panicked piling of stuff in the one dry corner, and an emergency repair on the sump prevented any major damage. Even more fortunate, all the 2020 repairs passed this weekend’s rain test.
I remember last year, though, as the flood water flowed across the floor, I looked at LuAnn and said, “Well, I suppose this water can remind us of our baptism, too.” After all, it’s not always calm, placid water that God chooses to use.
In my psalm devotion this morning, the author praises God for delivering the people from Egypt and journeying with them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. In doing so, God had brought them through the waters of the Red Sea. God had poured down rain in abundance to meet their needs as they traveled. Water, in all its chaotic, unbounded power being turned by God to meet the needs of God’s people.
The water doesn’t always go where we want it to go. Likewise, God’s grace has a way of working itself past the barriers we erect – in our own lives and between ourselves and others – to wash away the vestiges of sin and death. Grace, like water, finds a way.
I hope your homes aren’t wet this morning. I woke today to bright sunshine, and a keen sense of gratitude, knowing that my problems are definitely of a first-world nature. And I smiled a bit longer when I washed my face, looked in the mirror, and as is my habit, began the day with making the sign of the cross on my forehead in remembrance of my baptism. I pray that your home is dry…and your forehead wet with a sign of the cross.
Be well, friends. You are loved.
“Holy God, like rushing waters your grace and mercy flood creation. Help us to depend on you alone, trusting that you will lead and guide us. You have always been faithful to your people; help us show our faithfulness through praise of you and service to our neighbors in need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Dave Schreiber
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