Pastor Amy's Thursday Thoughts

I awoke this morning to a friend and colleague’s words on the starving children in Gaza. Alissia Thompson asked how we can let the children of Gaza starve if we love Jesus. The abject horror of the images coming out of Gaza have left me angry and overwhelmed. How is it that people who have been made of the dust of stars, in the image of the creator of stars, can inflict so much harm on vulnerable people?

Maybe this isn’t how you hoped my Thursday’s Thoughts would start after a two week break - but walk with me for a moment.

I spent last week with a gathering of other ABC-USA clergy women (including Thompson), in a program focused on “Luminous Darkness.” We went to NASA’s Houston Space Center (super cool!), sat and contemplated the paintings in the Rothko Chapel (unusual and fascinating), and read Scripture together focusing on God’s presence in darkness.

Last week was a high point. The daily news is a deep valley.

But, isn’t God present in the valleys also?

Doesn’t God walk beside us and call to us even then?

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the Parable of the Talents, reminding his followers that our calling is to use all that God has given us in service of God’s kin-dom. The chapter goes on to proclaim

the judgement of those who did not care for the physical needs of the poor - with the closing proclamation that when they failed to serve the poor they failed to serve Jesus.

We are familiar with those verses, they often find their way into our life at PMBC.

If we back up a few chapters to Matthew 22:34-40, we find Jesus’ teaching that all of the Jewish Law (Jesus was Jewish and lived under the law) can be summed up in two teachings: 1) love God fully; and, 2) love your neighbor as yourself. But I want to back us up a few centuries to the Israelite song book - specifically to Psalm 19. In that Psalm (attributed to King David), God’s glory that is seen in creation - in the bright day and in the dark night - is intimately tied to our keeping of the law.

God is revealed in the morning’s light and the starlight of night. What the psalmist sees in God’s glory is a calling to obey the law. The stars literally declare the need for us to love God and to love others.

The news is complicated and overwhelming, but God’s call to us is as clear as this morning’s bright blue sky or the first stars of the evening - we are to love others just as we love God.

The judgement of those who did not care for the physical needs of the poor - with the closing proclamation that when they failed to serve the poor they failed to serve Jesus.

We are familiar with those verses, they often find their way into our life at PMBC.

The news is complicated and overwhelming, but God’s call to us is as clear as this morning’s bright blue sky or the first stars of the evening - we are to love others just as we love God.

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