MAGNIFICENT OUTPOURING
So, here we are, in the midst of Holy Week. We have walked again with Jesus into the cauldron gurgling with anxiety, uncertainty, and danger in Jerusalem. It gets way worse before becoming almost unbelievably better - worse in the form of self-sacrifice in a death by execution. Love gets stretched out to its utter limits. Here we are bumping again into the retelling of the "old, old story". God gets down to some very serious business to make human liberation and life transformation achievable. And then ... God goes to greater lengths to make renewal of life and restoration of life realizable.
Several decades ago, Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot intoned a song of hope, (or is there an element of tongue-in-cheek in it?), with this refrain: "With your magnificent outpouring of that old familiar story
that's been used a million times to ease a million minds."
The Good Friday/Easter story has even broader and more enduring power than the story I think Gordon was singing about. It truly was a magnificent outpouring that continues to have perpetual rippling effect.
The cries of Christ's heart echo the cries of God's heart and seek to infuse our hearts and spirits with the same depth of compassion. Once again, here are some prayerful words from Keri Wehlander's Circles of Grace (pages 101-102, 105) that invite us to live into the image of such a loving God in which we have been made:
"There is a world that weeps, yearning for a sign of mercy.
The heart of God within us has no hands but our own.
There is a friend in anguish besieged by unexpected pain.
The heart of God within us has no ears but our own.
There is a multitude harmed and weary from prejudicial ways.
The heart of God within us has no eyes but our own.
A stranger faces death alone wondering if anyone will remember.
The heart of God within us has no tears but our own.
There is a life, hollow and lonely, longing for someone to walk alongside.
The heart of God within us has no feet but our own.
... Source of Our Mercy journey with us now as we seek to walk your path of blessing. Amen"
Yes, let us seek to be vessels of magnificent outpouring as we endeavour to walk in God's way and serve in God's world.
