Scripture reading: Phil. 2:12-24
So then, dear friends, as you always obeyed me when I was with you, it is even more important that you obey me now while I am away from you. Keep on working with fear and trembling to complete your salvation, because God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purpose.
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be innocent and pure as God's perfect children, who live in a world of corrupt and sinful people. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky, as you offer them the message of life. If you do so, I shall have reason to be proud of you on the Day of Christ, because it will show that all my effort and work have not been wasted.
Perhaps my life's blood is to be poured out like an offering on the sacrifice that your faith offers to God. If that is so, I am glad and share my joy with you all. In the same way, you too must be glad and share your joy with me.
If it is the Lord's will, I hope that I will be able to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be encouraged by news about you. He is the only one who shares my feelings and who really cares about you. Everyone else is concerned only with their own affairs, not with the cause of Jesus Christ. And you yourselves know how he has proved his worth, how he and I, like a son and his father, have worked together for the sake of the gospel. So I hope to send him to you as soon as I know how things are going to turn out for me. And I trust in the Lord that I myself will be able to come to you soon.
Meditation
Do you remember Romper Room? The TV show for pre-schoolers way back in the olden days?
Every
day it was a teacher – Miss Roma was the Winnipeg version – and maybe 5 or 10
pre-schoolers enjoying a half-hour of games, crafts, stories, always a lesson
about being a do-be rather than a don’t-be, and at the end of the show the
Magic Mirror. Miss Roma, or whoever the
local teacher was, at the end of the show would step away from the children on
the set, take her place in front of a Romper Room backdrop, life the Magic
Mirror in front of her face, set it spinning, and then looking straight at the
camera intone the magic words:
Romper bomper stomper boo
Tell me tell me tell me do
Magic Mirror tell me today
Did all my friends have fun at play?
“I see me friend Zachary out in Transcona, and Mary and Bill and Jack. And I see Simone and Jill and Bruce, and Johnny who’s feeling much better now. And … on and on, until the end of the list for the day, and … I hope to see you all right here again tomorrow in Romper Room.”
And how we all listened with such aching in the privacy of our living rooms to hear our names in the list. “Mom! Mom! She said my name! Miss Roma saw me!!”
What a delight that for many of us never came to be. To be included. To be part of the company – one of the family of kids that was seen and known by name by Miss Roma of Romper Room. “Oh Lord, how I long to be in that number!”
It would be nice right now to have a Magic Mirror like that. One that really worked. That would let me see you wherever you are. And to let you know by the mere mention of your name (Yes, I see Margaret and Rosalia, and Tori and Ray and Georgina and Stew, and Caroline and Marlene and Will, and there’s Ted and Bard and Jeff and Cindy and Josh and … oh so many of us, all of us one by one by name) that we’re all part of a larger company – a family – of like-minded, like-hearted people learning what it means to be do-be’s rather than don’t-be’s for God and for Jesus and for the good of the world … and having fun as we do it.
I wonder. Do we still feel the delight? Do we still ache for the grace of being included in the company of God’s love for us and for all? Do we still yearn to be counted and known as part a family – a very big family – that makes a difference for the good of the world?
It makes sense that today we are all in our separate, little bubbles. In our homes and our living rooms. In front a TV or laptop or tablet screen, with the WW web and the internet between us – at one and the same time connecting us and keeping us apart. In a pandemic being separate and distant from others is a way of living out and showing God’s love for all – not just keeping ourselves safe from them, but even more keeping them safe from us. It would be so easy for us to be part of someone else’s problem, part of making things worse, and not part of the world’s solution.
And the call not to be part of the world’s problem is universal; it goes out to God’s people all over the world. This week one of our members with a special personal connection to Ireland sent me a copy of a pastoral letter to the members of the Church of Ireland from their Archbishops John McDowell and Michael Jackson, saying “this is … a critical moment in our collective effort against the coronavirus. In following the call of our Lord to love our neighbours as ourselves, we all have a responsibility – and the power to make a difference – in containing the virus through our everyday choices and actions.”
But, at the same time, the necessity of isolating and keeping distant is not the whole of the story, is it?
A story in this past Thursday’s Business section of The Spec was titled, “Loneliness wearing on Canadian workers, study finds.” The story is about something we really all know, that for many people loneliness is worse than the fear of dying from COVID-19. People worry about the financial impact of the pandemic and about getting ill, but those for whom loneliness is a concern show the lowest mental health score – or, to put it another way, suffer the greatest depth of depression and anxiety.
The solution to the pandemic– isolation – becomes part of our problem because as in the days of our Romper Room childhood, so in the night-time of our COVID maturity: we all ache to know we are included in the family of God’s love.
And there’s no Magic Mirror to do this for us – to reach out and enter into people’s isolated places to let them know they are seen and known and part of God’s family. There is only us – us do-be’s – and the ways we learn to make a difference for good in the lives of lonely souls around us. As Paul says, “to be as stars shining in the dark, as we carry a message of love to those who ache to be included in it.”
And the
question is not whether we do this, or when, or even why. The question is what we do, and how we do it.
As the Archbishops of the Church of Ireland put it in their pastoral letter:
“Over the shorter days and longer nights [that we now are entering into], we should consider how acts and words of kindness can continue to help front–line workers, who deserve our continued support and gratitude; people who will be facing renewed restrictions whilst living alone; and all who are especially at risk through age or another vulnerability.
“[At this Harvest time, let us remember] what we can celebrate [and bring] … into the months ahead [for the good of all]: a faith in the God whose love never fails his people; hope that the Earth and all within it is the Lord’s; and the love of a natural world where God offers to us the beauty of the lilies in the field and mourns the death of every sparrow – how much more do we matter to him.
“Alongside this message, we commit to praying the following prayer daily with an invitation for others to join with us:
Heavenly Father, Lord of all creation
We thank you for the coming
of the harvest
And for those who maintain
the provision of food.
Enable us to become better
stewards of your creation,
thinking always of our legacy
to future generations.
Mindful of the unequal burdens borne by the old and the sick in this emergency
Inspire us also to be
unsparing in giving ourselves in the service of our neighbour
and in support of all who
continue to work on the frontline
in government, in hospitals
and care homes, and in the community.
All this we ask in the Name
of your Son, the servant of all. Amen.
I wonder if – or when – you pray a prayer like that daily, and then listen to how God might call you to be an answer to it, where you will find yourself led, what you will feel yourself called to do, and how you will discover yourself in making a difference for good in the lives of others?
I wish I had a Magic Mirror I could look through and see you, each in your own way shining like a star in the darkness for others who like you are just aching to know they are included in the family of God’s love.
God be with you, as we each and as all of us continue to be God’s stars in the dark skies of our time.
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