Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to
be still before God.
Opening Prayer: May those without hope take heart in you, O
Christ. May those with no home find
shade at your right hand. May those near
the end see beginnings; may those at the last become first. At the foot of your cross, O Christ, I come
in prayer. O Christ, be my help, O
Christ, be my hope. Amen. (Pamela
Hawkins, Weavings Volume XXVI, Number 2)
Scripture Reading for the Day: John
14:1-14
Reading for Reflection:
I had rented a car at the
airport and dived recklessly into rush-hour traffic in a city I knew not at
all. I had glanced hastily at a map but
(in my hurry and carelessness) had assumed that the way to my hotel and dinner
with old friends would be more or less self-evident. Within a quarter of an hour I had no idea
where I was. However, I knew I didn’t
want to be there. Once I left the
interstate (which had seemed a good idea at the time) I found myself in a
sprawling maze of dark warehouses and derelict tenements with bars on the
windows and grates over the doors. There
were few other cars (and no people) in sight.
Finally I saw in the distance the lighted
sign of a 24-hour coffee shop. I plunged
toward it with the desperation and relief of a shipwrecked sailor sighting a
lighthouse on the shore.
Inside, when I asked for directions to get
downtown, the waitress shrugged apologetically and said she didn’t know the
way; she had never been that far. My
heart sank. On a rising tide of panic, I
began to fear, as one does in a nightmare, that I would be lost forever.
But then a man who had been sitting in a
back booth—camping there apparently: a bedroll and various bags were tucked in
the corners—approached me. His face bore
the marks of a hard life; he had no teeth; his eyes were kind. “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked.
Once again I explained my
predicament. This time, thank God,
someone knew not only where I was, but also where I was headed, and how to get
from here to there.
“You’re just off Broadway here,” the man
told me. “You can be on it in a
minute. Once you get on that road, you
just stay on it.” He spread my crumpled
disregarded map on the counter, and traced the way with his finger. “The name of the street will change, but
don’t you mind that. You’ll come to
train tracks by the river, and it will be confusing, but don’t you mind that
either. You just keep going
forward. You’ll come to a bridge. Go over it.
Stay on that street. After a
while, you’ll see signs for downtown.
Then pretty soon you’ll see the name of the street you want, and you’ll
turn left. But till then, you just keep
going on the road you’re on.”
“Do you mean,” I exclaimed incredulously,
“that all I have to do is get on Broadway at the next corner and then just go
straight to my hotel?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he corrected me firmly. “It ain’t straight at all. Ain’t nothing straight about it. But you just keep going forward, and
you’ll get there all right.”
I thanked the man, got back in the car,
found Broadway, and stayed doggedly on it for many miles. The way twisted and turned, as he had warned
me it would. The name of the road
changed; it bumped over railroad tracks, flung itself across a wide river. Once on the other side, I was in a less
desolate landscape, and finally, as promised, I found the place and the friends
I had been seeking.
Everyone has had the experience, one way
or another, of suddenly not knowing where one is, or which way to turn, what
road to take. The journey, which at
first appeared straightforward, reveals itself to be full of unexpected
dangers, unmarked crossroads, bewildering choices, discouraging setbacks.
At the beginning of his Divine Comedy,
the great Italian poet, Dante, finds himself in a similar situation, alone “in
a dark wood” having lost “the straight way.”
Beset by terrors on every side, he is rescued by the Roman poet, Virgil,
who guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory to the very edge of Paradise . My own
loss of “the straight way” in the “dark woods” of north Kansas City taught me a
great deal that Dante also learns at the outset of his adventures. Remembering that experience has helped me
whenever I needed to find a way out of the dead ends and wrong turns that I
continue to encounter along my pilgrim way.
We are all on our long journeys home; we
all get lost along the way. We will need
to ask for help. We have to learn to
recognize the help we have asked for when it comes. We must not expect that the way will be
easy. We will need to be sure of our
destination and take responsibility for the path we have chosen. Then—and only then—we will have to keep going
until we reach our destination, or need to ask for help again.
None of which is as simple as it sounds. (Though
the Way Be Lost by Deborah Smith Douglas , Weavings,
Volume XXV, Number 3)
Reflection and Listening: silent and written
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that you are the way. Helps us to walk in you. Amen.
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