“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord..." Jeremiah 29:11-14b, Lectionary text for Jan. 31, 2018
Many of you know that my son, Sage, recently turned five years old. Sage has always been a highly sensitive child with strong feelings and emotions that he desperately needs to share with the world. Not only does he have "big" feelings and emotions, but he has "big" physical reactions to things as well. Sage has severe allergies to nuts: peanuts and tree nuts, as well as to eggs, and his body also responds sensitively to a variety of preservatives, dyes and fragrances. Sage usually presents with hives when his body is responding to something it doesn't like. He is also prone to get colds and coughs because he has asthma. All-around, as his pediatrician used to say, "Sage is just sensitive". Well, sensitive has turned into life-threatening situations more than once in his young life.
This January, Sage contracted the flu virus two times; first it was B, and then A. As a Mother to a sensitive child, I have to do a lot of positive self-talk... "he is going to be okay, he is going to be okay......." (and he is, so thank you for the prayers!)
I remember on the day of his birth, the only words I could say were not really words at all, but a song birthed from a deep seeded hope within my soul that traveled all the way up from my own birth, through the blood in my veins, and the air that refused to pass thru my body- and finally exploded into the room filling the space with this chanted prayer, "Dear God, please let him be okay, please let him be okay, please let him be okay. Dear God, please let him be okay, please let him be okay, please let him be okay."
I am saying it again, "Dear, God, Please let them be okay, please let them be okay, please let them be okay."
I know that we have big feelings and emotions about the big injustices that seem to rule the land these days, and somehow no amount of our screaming, writing, marching or crying seems to be enough -- so when the next bit of bad news soars through the sky like the 4th of July, and I forget to breathe, and taking one more step seems impossible, I will tell myself to wait for it. To wait for that song, again, to travel all the way up from the place where I was formed by the source of ALL life, and finally the HOPE sewn there before time was touched by fear to explode into possibility.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Spirit is leading the way,
Rev. Jenny Shultz-Thomas