Celebration!

Today is a celebration for me. It is the sixth anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. That means six years of "free" time, six years of life, six years of overflowing abundance. This will sound odd to some, but I am so thankful for my cancer, in part because it has shown me how precious the people in my life are, how wonderful the world is, and how much love surrounds me. In life before cancer, it was all too easy to take for granted all the wonder that supports and enfolds me. Now I know that I live a rare and valuable life. All that has happened has been gift and grace. And today I celebrated by remembering all the care that came my way in those early days of diagnosis, surgery, surgery, surgery, surgery, and treatment. I celebrated by giving thanks for all those, known and unknown who tended to and cared for me. I celebrated by planting many flowers in my garden, by cooking a lovely supper, and by saying "I love you" to at least some of the people who are dear to me.
It was a good day -- but then aren't they all? Thank God!

Trinity Sunday

The First -- and Last -- Word

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4
Psalm 8
Matthew 28:16-20

In the beginning when God began to create the world, God did that work by speaking the world into being. Have you ever noticed this?

“God said, let there be light” and there was light. “God said, let the dry land appear” and it did. “God said, let us make human kind in our own image” and man and woman came into being.

Where there was absolutely nothing, or so it seemed, there was this word from God calling forth everything, the heavens and the earth, all living beings -- you and me. What power was contained in those words!

But that was then and this is now, and whenever the beginning happened, and who really knows, it was a long time ago. And if we are honest about it, God’s ability to speak a new creation into being seems to us like a fairytale, a myth, something that might have happened once upon a time in a faraway place but just seems impossible now.
It is hard to see how God’s word still brings a new world into being. After all, the old world seems pretty entrenched. And we are awash in words, even if they aren’t from God. Billboards fly past us on the highway full of words, the radio is on, the television is on pouring words into the air around us. Our computers have made words ever present, instantaneously transmissible, plentiful and cheap.

It might be that we have minimized the impact of words by their proliferation, but I wonder. I think there is still great power in the words we speak - life-changing, life-creating power. Just consider the impact of these words:

I love you.
Congratulations, you have been admitted.
Will you marry me?
You have cancer.
You’re having twins.

In the instant those words are spoken, someone’s life is changed forever, recreated on the spot. And if there is such power in our words -- we who are human, only human -- then how much more so is there power in God’s words.

You know, we think of the Bible as the word of God and so it is. But is the Bible the record of all God has ever had to say to the world? Is this it from beginning to end, all done, so to speak? Has God fallen silent? Is the bible the last word that God spoke? I don’t think so. I think God is still speaking a powerful creative word in our world. But I think it is harder for the world to hear that word now than it was in the beginning when there was nothing. We are surrounded by distractions and noise, by conflict and war, by death and destruction, and all that makes it hard for us to hear the eternal word that still dwells among us.

The poet, T.S. Elliot, understood this dilemma:

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise
and deny the voice

(T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” The Waste Land and Other Poems.
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich: New York, 1962, p 64)

Well, we will never have enough silence, will we, and no question about it, we walk among noise. Do we also avoid the face, as Eliot says? Do we allow our rejoicing to be drowned out by the world’s noise? Do we deny the voice?

It does not have to be this way. Let me suggest one approach to hearing the word of God’s creative voice. In the Hebrew, “word” is dabar. And while dabar is usually translated as word, it also has the meaning of an action or a thing. I think that is how we can hear God in our world, through actions and things.

When someone shows us an unexpected kindness; when people reach across racial and cultural lines to offer aid and assistance; when the pain of another’s loss becomes our pain; when we pray and give and work and act on behalf of the world, all of that is the word of God. And when we take the things of the earth – bread and wine, water and oil -- and celebrate God’s presence through them, that also is God’s word.

We are surrounded by the power and presence of God’s word, but these days, that word may not be so likely to come as a clear and unmistakable voice in our ear. Instead, listen for the word in the actions of the faithful. Listen for it in sacramental love. Expect God to speak in unexpected ways, like out of the mouths of little ones. The psalmist says that it is out of the mouths of babes and infants that God builds a fortress against all that would attack our faith, our belief, our sense of the presence of God.

Think about that for a minute. When we baptize these twin boys this morning, these little babies are speaking God’s word to us. Here they are, created out of nothing, nothing except love, and it is through them that God can speak to us of love. It is their gurgling and cooing and crying and babbling that somehow can keep the enemies of God at bay. They are, after all made in the image of God -- and so are we all.

You are made in the image of God. You are God’s reflection in the world. And you are a word spoken by God. You have in you the potential to be life changing, life creating. You have the potential to bring into being the goodness that God intends for our world. You have the power to speak God’s word in the word. Claim that power and act God does: loving, creating, transforming, bringing light and life to the dark and dead places.

And here is the last word from God, or perhaps I should say the lasting word. It comes to us from Jesus, the one who is also called the Word, the eternal Logos. His last word to his disciples -- then and now -- is this: “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Dear friends, this is the good news of the gospel. Believe it, trust it, and let your life speak it.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

China

I watch this terrible, terrible news from China -- we all do. It is so hard to see but harder still to hear. These are families who have put all their hopes into one child, and now that child is lying dead outside his (and yes, most of them are boys) school, or worse yet, buried under rubble. The mothers wail in an almost unbearable cry. And I know it doesn't quite apply, but all I can think of is Rachel weeping over her children and she would not be comforted because they were no more. It breaks my heart.

Easter 3

On the Road

Acts 2:14a; 36-41
Luke 24:13-35

It is often the case that, when a woman appears in the scripture, she is not named. Of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, one is named and the other is not. I can imagine that unnamed disciple as a woman. And I also think that because the second disciple is not named, that person might be us. Somehow we are invited into this story. Somehow we, too, are on the road. So reflect on me with this story, of how it might have been then – and how it might be even now.

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I hardly know where to begin to tell you this story, so I guess I’ll just start in the middle of it -- when Cleopas and I were on the road. We were going back to Emmaus, leaving Jerusalem. There was nothing for us there anymore, no reason to stay, no future really, so we were giving up, going back to the old way of life.

It had been awful, just awful. More horrible than anything I have ever seen before, or since. Jesus, crucified, dying a terrible death. I had been there with the others; I watched the whole thing. And then there was the news we had heard only that morning, from the other women who had been to his tomb. I didn’t go; I didn’t think I could bear to see his poor dead body again. But the women who went came back saying that they had seen angels, that his body was not there. For me, this was beyond belief and, quite honestly, it was like insult added to injury. First he was killed and then his body was gone.

With something so bad as all of this, you would think we would have just wanted to forget the whole thing. But it seems it is human nature to need to talk through terrible things. That’s what we were doing on the road – that long and lonely road -- talking through it, going over and over it, trying to figure it out.

We had so many questions. How could it have gone so wrong? How could the crowd have turned on him that way? Why did Judas do it? And wasn’t there something we could have done, should have done?

We walked and we talked, pouring out our grief and guilt to each other. I felt so heartbroken that I could barely pay attention to anybody else on the road. So when one of the other travelers fell in with us, I hardly even noticed. He walked alongside us, eavesdropping I suppose, because after a bit he asked us what we were discussing. Cleopas turned to him and said, “You’re coming from Jerusalem. Are you the only person who’s been in that city who hasn’t heard about the things that have happened?” Well, apparently he hadn’t.

So Cleopas and I told him all about Jesus. Seems strange now looking back on it, us telling him about Jesus, but it wasn’t strange then. We told him how Jesus was a prophet mighty in word and deed and how we had hoped, oh how we had hoped, that he would be the one to redeem Israel, to save us. We told him how our hopes were as dead as our Lord – dead and buried and gone. And we told him the unbelievable tale from our friends, that he wasn’t in the tomb anymore.

The stranger listened to us and then he said an odd thing that I didn’t really understand at the time. He told us that we were foolish. He said something about our being slow of heart. And then he began to explain to us about the Messiah, opening the scripture for us. He went all the way back to the beginning, to Moses, and then all the prophets, explaining how it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die and then to enter into his glory.

I listened and I began to feel a flicker of hope, my heart warming a little as he talked. Maybe, just maybe, it was true. Maybe it was not over. He seemed to know, and listening to him, I could almost believe it, too.

Well, we were so intent on what he was saying that we reached our village in no time. But the stranger seemed to be traveling on, like a man with a long journey ahead of him. I couldn’t bear to see him go and we begged him to come and stay with us. He agreed and we took him home.

We were tired, worn out with grief and despair, exhausted from all the activity in Jerusalem, and it was late, but we had a guest. So we began to prepare a meal. Cleopas made a little fire, and I unpacked our bags from Jerusalem, laying out some cheese and dried fruit, a small container of wine. And then when the fire was going, I got out the flour and a little oil to make some cakes of unleavened bread. And that simple ordinary act almost overwhelmed me with grief, because I remembered being in the kitchen near that upper room and mixing the unleavened bread for another supper, the supper that turned out to be the last one. It all came flooding back to me and I think I must have salted the dough with my tears. But there was hospitality to be offered and so I set aside my feelings and brought the meal to the table.

The three of us gathered there to eat, and then the most amazing thing happened. Our guest became the host. He took the bread, the bread that I had made, and began to say the blessing: “Baruch et ta adonia elahaynu melech ha olam ha motzi lechem mean ha aretz.”

And as he broke the bread to give it to us, I saw, I knew. He was holding my bread in his ruined hands, and my eyes were opened. I remembered what he had said the last time he held my bread like that. “This is my body broken for you, do this and remember me”. I wasn’t at the table that time, I was watching from the door, but I saw, I heard, and this was no different.

It was, somehow, his own life that he was holding out to us -- blessed and broken and given away. It was true. It was the kind of thing that was impossible to believe, and at the same time impossible not to believe. It was true, he was alive, in a different way, a new way, but alive.

And I have to say, I think the same thing was true for me. In that moment I was alive in a different way. I saw him holding my bread and it was as though he had taken hold of my own life. I received his blessing. And when he held that broken bread, it was as though he laid his hands on my broken heart. His life was given to us just as the bread was, and I knew in that moment that it must be the same with us. Our lives must be given away, too. We were to become bread for a hungry world..


Well, he was gone, all too soon, but somehow our grief had vanished, too. It was late, it was dark but there was no question about what we would do. We got up and went back to Jerusalem. We found the eleven and all the rest of our companions, and they were telling similar stories, that he was alive. And we told them how he had been with us on the road, how he had opened the scripture, and how he had been known to us in the breaking of the bread.

And that’s the end of my story. But, to tell you the truth, this story doesn’t have an end. It goes on and on because he goes on and on. He is alive. And he will be made known. This is a promise. And the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far away, all whom God calls.

This is the promise:

Wherever two or three offer what they have to a stranger, he is there. Wherever broken-hearted friends seek to comfort each other, he is there. Wherever life is hopeless and the road is long and lonely and dark, he is there. Wherever the Word is opened and bread is broken and lives are shared, he is there. Wherever his friends gather around the table in faith and love, he is there.

He is alive. It is true. He is alive and he is here.

Lead me not into temptation

I have been working to simplify things. I have too much stuff and everywhere there is the push to accumulate more. So I have been trying to avoid temptation by stopping the catalogs that come unbidden into my house. There is a web site that allows you to opt out. So far, have 114 on my "do not send" list. Need I say more....

Easter!

Easter Expectations

Matthew 28:1-10

We come to Easter worship expecting the ringing of bells, the scent of lilies, the sound of brass and organ and choir, bright banners and joyful music – and we are not disappointed. It is a celebration! And it isn’t just at church. At home there might be colored eggs and chocolate bunnies and perhaps a special brunch or dinner planned for later today. It is still early in the year but spring did arrive officially on Thursday and you can feel the promise of new life – bulbs popping up, more hours of daylight, robins returning. We rejoice, and it seems that even the earth itself joins in. Our Easter is a joyful occasion and that is why we come this morning – to celebrate that joy. That is what we expect.

But in truth, Easter defies any ordinary expectations. Certainly the first Easter did. The women came to the tomb expecting it to be sealed, expecting to express their grief in the place where Jesus had been buried. They did not expect an earthquake, they did not expect the stone to be rolled away, they certainly did not expect an angel saying, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.”

They probably should have expected this, though, shouldn’t they? After all, as the holy messenger reminded them, Jesus himself had told them it would happen. And probably even before the angel instructed them to “Go and tell,” they were on their way -- hurrying, running, stumbling. They were terrified by what had happened and, at the same time, they were overjoyed by the possibility of what might yet be.

And then, the thing they least expected – they met Jesus himself. And his words spoke directly to their fear and their joy. “Greetings,” he said – although a more accurate translation of the Greek might be Rejoice! “Rejoice,” he said, and then he added: “Do not be afraid.”

Rather than being paralyzed by their fear, they were to go and tell. And this would be possible because he would be going ahead of them. He was sending them all to Galilee. Instead of remaining in Jerusalem where it all seemed to end, they were to go back to Galilee where it all began. They were to go there and pick up where he left off – that is what he expected of them. They were to go to the place where he taught and touched and healed, where he showed the power of God’s love, where he pushed the limits of conventional religion until it stretched so wide that everyone was included. They were to go back to Galilee and take up that same work – preaching, teaching, healing, touching, loving, including – inviting everyone into this new way of life that he had lived among them.

It would not be easy. They knew full well what had happened to him – these women who had remained at the cross, who had stood by him to the end – or at least what had seemed like the end. They must have known how hard it would be to do what he said. But there he was, right in front of them, giving them a set of new commandments, telling them what he expected of them: “Rejoice, do not be afraid. Go and tell, and I am going ahead of you.” And suddenly all of their expectations were transformed and everything was possible again. They could change the world, because he had changed everything.

Well. That was then and this is now. And how about you? What is it that you expect, really expect? Do you expect to change the world? Have you come here excepting to meet the risen Christ?

If not, take comfort that those women in Jerusalem didn’t expect that either, at least not at first. But there he was, alive somehow, and calling them into a new life, too. There he was, God’s eternal “yes” spoken to the “no” that the world tried to say at the cross.

And the world is still trying to say “no” to God’s power and life-giving love. But God will not be silenced; God is still speaking an eternal, resurrection “yes.” It is still happening, because Christ is alive! We sing it; we say it; let us believe it and live it, too.

And what would it be like to meet him these days? Where would you expect to find him? He himself has told us: he is the hungry and homeless one with no warm jacket to wear on a cold spring day; he is the one who is thirsty for love, a stranger who is lonely and far from home; he is sick or in prison and scared (Matthew 25:35-36). He still wears the face of humankind.

And just as he did then, he is sending us to Galilee, our Galilee, to the place of ministry and service. We are to engage in the same work he did – preaching, teaching, healing, touching, loving, including – inviting everyone into a new way of life.

And what he expects of us is that we embrace joy. He expects us to live without fear even in the midst of a dangerous and uncertain world. He expects us to go and tell, to speak a word of faith, to speak God’s word of “yes,” with our very lives.

That is what he expects of us, and here is what we can expect of him. Wherever we go, wherever we are called, whatever we do in faith, he has gone ahead of us and he is there, waiting to walk with us in our own discipleship.

So remember his Easter commandment: Rejoice and do not be afraid. Be joyful; as the poet has said, be joyful, even though you have considered all the facts (Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front). Live without fear and expect to meet Jesus in the midst of our weary and wounded world. Because that is where he is, and he is waiting for us to join him. He is expecting us.

Rejoice and do not be afraid. Go and tell! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! He lives! And remember this: he is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28.20b).


(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Holy Saturday

Waiting

This is a day of silence. All earth holds its breath, waiting, waiting.

For Jesus’ first disciples, it was the Sabbath, the day they rested, prayed, gathered around the light. But it must have seemed that the light had gone out forever; it must have seemed that all was lost. He was dead and buried, and gone forever, so they thought.

But something was happening on that Holy Saturday. The scripture says that “the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does” (1 Peter 4:6) and tradition holds that Jesus spent this day preaching to those who had not heard the Word of life in their lifetime. “[Christ] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-19), rescuing the damned from an eternal separation from God. Even in death, he was preparing for tomorrow, preparing to speak the ultimate Word of Life, a Word so powerful that it could reach beyond the grave.

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If you are spending this waiting time preparing for tomorrow, check here and here for information on “green” Easter eggs.

Good Friday

This is a stressful time on campus as students who are about to graduate contemplate their futures. There is always anxiety about getting a job or getting into graduate school – making the right decision. I think it is very hard not to sell out. Many of the students I know leave school with huge amounts of debt, and it is tempting to take the job that will pay off the fastest, no matter what it is. But that path of least resistance is often not the path of faithfulness, and perhaps it has always been so:

Then there was the nameless carpenter who made the cross. He was a skilled workman. He knew full well what the purpose of that cross was. If you questioned him he probably would have said: “But I am a poor man who must make a living. If other men use it for ill, is it my fault?” So say all of us who pursue jobs which add nothing to human welfare or which hurt some people. Does the work I do aid or hinder human beings? Are we crossmakers for our modern world? There are many, many of them. (Morton Kelsey, in The Cross: Meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ)

So to my friends who are making career decisions, I echo the question: Does the work you are contemplating aid or hinder human beings? As Frederick Buechner describes it:

“Vocation” comes from the Latin vocare (to call) and means the work a [person] is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self interest. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you find your work rewarding, you have presumably met requirement (a), but if your work does not benefit others, the chances are you have missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work does benefit others, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are unhappy with it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your customers much either.… The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. (Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC)

The world has too many crossmakers as it is. Choose work that brings life, not death. Choose life!

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And on this Good Friday, you may wish to take a virtual walk with Jesus through the stations of the cross.

Maundy Thursday

We call this Maundy Thursday. It is a strange phrase, because of that unfamiliar word—Maundy—not one that we use in any other context. It means commandment and is similar to words that we do use—mandate and mandatory.

But what is there in this Thursday that is mandatory for us? Is it just that we must walk through this sad time of betrayal to get ready for what will come tomorrow, and the next day—and the next? Maybe. Is it necessary somehow for us to feel abandoned, to suffer at the hands of those closest to us, just as Jesus did? Maybe. Are we required to confront our own capacity for betrayal? Maybe that, too.

In some ways, I find Maundy Thursday the hardest part of week before Easter, in some ways even worse than Good Friday. By Friday it is all done, or at least set in motion in some irretrievable way. On Saturday, he is dead and in that moment it seems so final. But Thursday -- Thursday, it could all have been changed. At least, it seems there was that possibility. It did not seem so irreversible. It is the point in the chain of events where there are still choices, decisions to be made, options available. Maybe Judas could have changed his mind on Thursday night.

Yes, it seems there are options, and even so, we know how this will turn out. And maybe those who gathered around the table with Jesus knew it, too. This was not the first time they had shared a meal. They must have eaten together hundreds of times. Heaven knows, he would eat with anyone, he was not picky about that. That was part of what had stirred up all the trouble.

But this was not just any other meal. It was different. There was something not right, a heavy, nameless anxiety, and even though they could not have said exactly what it was, it must have weighed on them, settling in the pit of the stomach like a stone.

He knew. He knew that God had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God. And so he got up from the table, laid down his robe and wrapped a towel around himself. He poured some water and began to wash their feet and wipe them with the towel.

He had done some strange things, but nothing like this, at least not to them. He had touched the untouchables, he had raised he dead, he had confronted the religious leaders, he had restored sight to the blind and multiplied the loaves. And they had watched, they had been with him. But they had not been the recipients of his action in quite this way—until now, at the end.

And wasn’t it just like him to take this simple little ritual of welcome and stand it on its head? Of course, they were used to washing their own feet. Any good host would provide the necessary container of water and a towel. It was almost a habit. But it was the most menial of tasks, something not even the lowest Jewish servant could be ordered to do. And here he was, down on his knees, taking their tired dusty feet in his hands and washing and drying them, the towel around him becoming soiled with the dirt from their feet.

He washed them all – the faithful who would follow him to death, the doubting who wanted to believe but could not, the one who would deny him, the one who would betray him. He washed them all. He poured out the water on all of them; just as he poured out his love. No exceptions, no test of worthiness, just the service of love from their Lord on his knees.

But it was not what they had hoped. It was not what they wanted. They did not want a savior who would be kneeling down before them. They wanted a savior who would cause their enemies to kneel down before them. They wanted their savior to come in the world’s way of power and might, and instead he came in God’s way, on his knees. It must have seemed that he had betrayed them, that his taking the form of a servant was somehow a reversal of roles that almost mocked their hopes and dreams.

No, it was not what they wanted. And truth to tell, it is not what we want, either. We, too, want a God who will conquer our enemies, one who will affirm that we are entitled to the power and might that we claim as our own, who can make things turn out the way we want, or at the very least, solve our problems. Instead we find ourselves confronting the One who kneels at our feet.

Our Lord does for us what he did around the table that night. His love is poured out on us like sweet water. He cradles our lives in his hands, soothing hearts that have grown tough and hard and callused, cleansing the places in us that have been soiled by the journey of life. He kneels at our feet and he pours out his life for us. He kneels in obedience, in obedience to the Holy One who sent him to this work, but also in obedience to us.

Because the choice is ours. This is Thursday and we have time to change our minds. There are still options available. We can receive love from his hands or we can nail those same hands to the cross. And the terrible part of his love for us, almost too much too to bear, is this: he will honor our decision, even if it is our will to reject him.

But know this: even if we deny him, if we doubt, if we desert him, if we betray him—he loves us still. Even in our rejection, his love is poured out for us. He empties himself, giving us all he has, all he is, until it must seem there is nothing left. But the love he gives comes from an endless supply, endless because it is of God and endless because it is always being multiplied in the world.

He has set us an example, that we also should do as he has done to us. We also should lay down our robes, that which gives us identity and status and protection. We should allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. We should lay down our lives. We also should kneel down in service to those whom we love and to those who have deserted us and those whom we know will betray us. We should pour out our love for each other. And in order to do that, we must empty ourselves of judging and power and pride and disappointment and anything that is not Love. Then we can do as he has done.

This is his mandate to us: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is his mandate. It is not easy, sometimes not even possible, unless. . . unless we know in our heart of hearts that we are loved and loved to the end. And then, of course, all things are possible.

Our Lord and Teacher kneels before us. The grit and grime of our journeys cling to our lives. He pours out love over us. He is tender and gentle with us, with the places in us that are bruised and sore, with the parts of our lives that have grown hard and callused and unfeeling. He lays his hands on us, his wounded hands, on the places that have grown weary, the parts of ourselves where we feel the effects of the hard traveling that has brought us this far.

He washes us as a service of love. He takes the stain of our sin upon himself. And bathed in his love, we are refreshed, restored, made clean.

Do you know what he has done to us? Do you know that we must do the same?


(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Five Years of War

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote this many years ago, and it is still true:

If we assume that life is worth living and that humans have the right to survival, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war.

The church cannot be silent while humankind faces the threat of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to her mission, she must call for an end to the arms race. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never ending reign of chaos.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.


Dear Friends, let us pray for peace -- and let us work for it, too.
Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy.