Lent 2

 

I invite you to listen again to the hymn, Guide Me, O My Great Redeemer.  Listen, lean in, hear with your whole heart the second verse:

Open now the crystal fountain, where the healing waters flow.  Let the fire and cloudy pillar lead me all my journey through.  Strong deliverer, strong deliverer, ever be my strength and shield, ever be my strength and shield.

Healing water that washes over us – renewing and refreshing.  Healing water that supports us and our souls feel buoyed by a love.  Healing water that saturates and soaks our lives with God’s presence.

When have you felt that kind of water?  Maybe diving into a pool on a hot summer day as a kid.  Maybe when you visited the Holy Land and you actually waded in the water of Jordan.  Maybe when you walked along the beach, waves tickled your toes, as you held onto the truth that Jesus called his disciples from the seashore. 

Water flows through scripture.  From the beginning with Genesis to being parted in Moses to a foreign river during Exile in Babylon where faithful lamented/wept to this verse of music reminding us that God loves to splash in the waters of life.

I invite you today to take water, trace the symbol of a cross on your forehead.  Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, would have been traditionally – in a non-COVID year – a service of putting ashes on peoples’ foreheads.  But those ashes, symbolic of vulnerability, frailty and even death, do not erase the baptismal promise of God’s love that was traced on your forehead years ago.  To remember your baptism as you sing about waters washing over you; God guiding you; and God strength supporting you.

Where do you need God’s strength today?  In a meeting or conversation?  In dealing with something that causes your stomach to somersault.  With patience or perseverance or just trying to get through the day without eating all the leftover Valentine’s Day candy?

Name that place you long for God to enter in and sing the second verse of the hymn again as your prayer for today.