Peace and all good to you!

Dear Congregation,

Peace and all good to you in these challenging times in which we are living. I hope you have a nice holiday as we celebrate freedom, and I urge you to pray for freedom for all people.

As we share in the sacrament of Holy Communion this Sunday I hope you’ll be present in worship. The bread and wine are food for our bodies and for our spirits. They strengthen us on life’s journey as we remember Jesus and what he taught and lived.

I share with you this poem/prayer that I find meaningful. Be bread!

In Christ’s love.

Pastor Candy

“Sometimes It Just Seems to be Too Much”

by Ted Loder.

Sometimes, Lord,

It just seems to be too much:

too much violence, too much fear;

too much of demands and problems;

too much of broken dreams and broken lives;

too much of war and slums and dying;

too much of greed and squishy fatness

and the sounds of people

devouring each other and the earth;

too much of stale routines and quarrels,

unpaid bills and dead ends;

too much of words lobbed in to explode

and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;

too much of turned-away backs and yellow silence,

red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.

Sometimes the very air seems scorched

by threats and rejection and decay

until there is nothing

but to inhale pain

and exhale confusion.

Too much of darkness, Lord,

too much of cruelty

and selfishness

and indifference…

Too much, Lord,

too much,

too bloody,

bruising,

brain-washing much.

Or is it too little,

too little of compassion,

too little of courage,

of daring,

of persistence,

of sacrifice;

too little of music

and laughter

and celebration?

O God,

Make of me some nourishment

for these starved times,

some food

for my brothers and sisters

who are hungry for gladness and hope,

that, being bread for them,

I may also be fed

and be full.