One of the evening psalms among today’s lectionary readings is Psalm 8, which includes some of the most wondrous words in the Bible:
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
In the story of God, as we tell it, there is a barrier that exists between the Created world and its Creator. A wall. Sin, we say, separates us from God, and separation from God is unbearable.
If you think churches are divided today, reread Ephesians 2:11–22.
That, said the Rev. Samuel Son during the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School worship, is the place Paul reminded believers they once reverted to childish name-calling: “The Uncircumcision” and “The Circumcision.”
The favorite and persistent question of children everywhere may exasperate parents, grandparents and caregivers, but it’s an important question, the Rev. Samuel Son told the 450 participants during worship at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School.
Blessings can come from unanticipated sources in places we might not expect. For the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield and her family, the place was outside a Goodwill dressing room, and the sources were two older women unknown to the Duffield family.
Growing up in the City of New York, the Rev. Samuel Son said he remembers pretending that he didn’t care how early in the process he was selected to play in a pickup baseball game. “We would stand there, trying to look like we didn’t care,” Son recalled during evening worship at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School. “But at the same time, we tried to stand out. We definitely didn’t want to be the last kid [selected].”
After telling the 450 or so people attending the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School that they’re co-creators with God and, as John Calvin once said, “little manifestations of God’s glory,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield proved her point by asking participants to use their cellphones to take first a selfie and then a photo of the people seated around them.
As in many other places in the world, the global pandemic has pushed millions of Filipinos and their children further into poverty. But a global partner of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), has responded in creative ways not only to feed the children’s bodies but to deal with their psychosocial needs as well.
Ruling Elder James Parks of Baltimore, a member of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board who cut his teeth on community organizing, opened his devotional time with the board recently by playing the clip of Gregory Porter’s “Take Me to the Alley.”
Samantha “Foxx” Winship of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, wants to reshape the image of what it is to be a farmer and reclaim the practice of growing food as a source of empowerment for African Americans.
