A Hallelujah

It seems like I have been praying for the safe return of soldiers forever. I think from the minute I was ordained in 1991 our country went to war, and we have been in a state of battle pretty much ever since...I have no problems praying for soldiers and for peace...but I wish it would end...

Every now and then I pray for some young person who has ended their life by their own hand. Always a sad time to see families and friends of suicide victims who not only mourn their loss, but mourn their failure to help or be part of a better solution...even if there never was a choice in the ending...a broken heart doesn't always see clearly.

My prayers are for the aging, especially those who experience their world at pace so fast and so out-of-control that they wonder in fear at things they were able in former times to conquer and survive...how disconcerting it can be to sit and watch a lifetime of effort and achievement be mutated and changed without so much as a nod to its provenance and history...

At times I pray for those in relationships that cannot bear the fruit of dreams held tightly against a heaving chest...how can a man or a woman or a family or a congregation measure up to the dreams of youngsters clutching teddy bears and awaiting the dawn? Who can compete against not only the perfect, but the icon of a world in which we do not live?

I always pray for death...not that it comes...but that we see it for what it is: a rest stop on a journey given by God to each of us to live, and live forever in Jesus Christ...that death--the death of a life well lived to that point--is a gift itself...not because we die nobly or in the arms of God, but rather because in dying we see sorrow for what it really is...the connective hallelujah of our lives together on earth.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.