Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

The Psalm this morning proclaims praise of God with which we are familiar:
Great things are they that you have done, O Lord my God!
how great your wonders and your plans for us!
there is none who can be compared with you.

But this is not the only sentiment of the Psalm, there are also earnest pleas for deliverance and mercy from a present situation. This pairing makes a lot of sense, and is common in the Psalms (and our prayers too.) Staying attuned to deep hope in the midst of suffering takes practice and community.

Walter Brueggemann, modern scholar of the Hebrew Bible writes:
The power of hope in the biblical texts focuses on these three issues which must be faced if we are to understand hope as more than religious escapism:
1) The function of hope is to keep the present open and provisional, under scrutiny.
2) The natural setting of hope is among those who have grief and process it in the community.
3) The enemies of hope include muteness, fulfillment, and technique, all ways of trying to keep life on our own terms.*

I think he is onto something on all counts, and can see how the calling to be a hopeful people, Easter people can be squashed by comfort or any practice that makes us think our salvation is on our own terms or by our own merit. This prayer encourages the listening needed to hear God's call to us, to hope, to believe in a world as it could be.

Jolted by Address
(On reading 1 Samuel 3)*
We are surrounded by a din of demanding voices:
selling,
recruiting,
seducing,
coercing.

We screen them out in order to maintain our sanity,
to secure our rest.

And then, in the night, you address us,
you call us by name,
you entrust to us risky words,
you empower us with authority.

But your voice is on first hearing not distinctive.
We confuse your voice with that of an old friend,
or deep hope,
or powerful fear,
or an ancient bias.

We hear, but we do not listen –
jolted, bewildered, resistant.

But your voice sneaks up on us:
you address us,
you call us by name,
you entrust us with risky words,
you empower us with authority.

Sometimes…occasionally…boldly…we answer:
“Speak, I am listening.”
Then we say, “Here am I.”

And listening, we are made new and sent dangerously by your address.


In Christ, the one to whom there is no comparison, and who calls us by name,
Mtr. Taylor

*Passage about Hope by Walter Brueggeman, "Hope Within History," p. 90.
**Prayer by Walter Brueggeman, “Prayers for a Privileged People.”