Singing Our Faith

 

We continue to let the hymn, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling be our soundtrack of the week.  Sing and pray with me the second verse:

 

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into ev’ry troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit,
let us find thy promised rest.
Take away the love of sinning;
Alpha and Omega be.
End of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.

 

I wonder where is your heart heavy or the weather pattern of your soul unsettled today?  Where do you regret what you’ve done or said, left undone or unsaid?  Sin is about separation.  Sin can be separation from self or others or God.  If that sounds familiar, it echoes the verse from Mark 12.  When we don’t love, we can be separated from the core of ourselves.  For example, ever say something and immediately want to take it back?  Just every day ending in “y” thought each person reading.  When we don’t love our family/friends, something can seem off.  And love is at the very center and core of our Source of life – God.  Sin is anytime I go astray from the love and grace that is at the root of my life.  Sin is when I think my way is better than God’s way.  Sin is not about moral rules as much as it is the ways I often pull others down to prop myself up.  Sin is when I hurt or harm myself, others, or any part of God’s creation.  Sin is brokenness.  Sin can be individual or collective.  I sin in moments when I treat someone as less than a beloved child of God, even when that person has treated me that way.  Sin can also be collective.  We know that the Christian Church both stood on the sideline and supported slavery, preaches discrimination of LGBTQ, and has not honored the leadership of women. 

 

Yet, this hymn celebrates that God is at the beginning and end (Alpha and Omega).  Even when I go astray, God is there.  Or as my favorite quote goes, “God is a circle, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.”  Or there is no where God is NOT.  I can rest in God in ways that set me free to love because God’s love is constant. 

 

How can the breath of God fill, sustain, strengthen, and stir within you today?  As you inhale right now, breathe in God’s presence meeting you in your anger or anxiety/frustration or fear.  Now exhale the ways you might pass along pain rather than process it.  Breathe in God who is here in this moment and exhale a prayer for God to meet you every moment today.

 

Breathe in God’s excelling love and exhale God’s love for all those you encounter this day.  Amen.