The Faithfulness of God

Phil Wilson asked me to post the talk I made last night at Vespers on my blog. So, at the risk of ego tripping, here it is.

Read Rev. 7:9-17, John 10:22-30, and Psalm 100 to which the devotional is tied.

My name is Judy Thomas. I am a retired librarian and university professor. I am 68 years old. I am at an age now where everything hurts and what doesn't hurt, doesn't work. I get winded just watching TV. My mind promises things my body cannot deliver. It takes longer to rest than it took to get tired.

As this age, I can remember candy cigarettes, 78 vinyls, 45 records and 8-track tapes. I can remember when there was only one kind of Coke, and it came in 8 oz. glass bottles. I remember newsreels before movies, roller skate keys, the Edsel, cafes with tableside jukeboxes,little boxes of peanuts with money inside if you were lucky, and ditto machines.

68 is an age in which I have to remind myself that Michaelangelo and Monet were still producing paintings at 90. That Verdi wrote his greatest operas after 90, and John Glenn went back into space at age 75.

I am now at that age when I know better. I can look back at the faithfulness of God in the past and forward to the promise of heaven. I am now closer to heaven than adolescence for sure. And I am confidently looking forward to a place in that great multitude of the Revelation passage about heaven where there are springs of living water.

My great-grandfather was a church planter in the late l800's, I have been one of God's sheep for 56 years, and my son is the worship minister of this church. One of my favorite books is Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Right Direction. I guess you could say that is what my famiy has practiced for the last 150 years--a long obedience in the same direction. We have seen God's faithfulness through all generations as Psalm 100 says.

That did not guarantee, however, that troubles, toils, and snares did not come:

For the last 16 years of my marriage, my mother-in-law lived with us. She was a very difficult, manipulative, cunning woman who enjoyed her misery and mine. She was what Joyce Landorf Heatherley calls "an irregular person."

In 1976, my mother died of melanoma--too young to really get to know her only grandson. Brandon was six.

In 1990, my dad died unexpectedly of an aneurysm.

In 1991, my husband Sam Thomas died too young of prostate cancer--too soon to see his son graduate, marry, and become a minister.

In 1997, I was diagnosed myself with colon cancer and spent several months in chemotherapy which cured me with God's help, but which left me with side effects that slow me down today.

Yes, there was despair and doubt and crying in those times. But through all the losses, there were so many occasions of God's faithfulness--so much love, so much help and prayer from the church community, so many blessings that I would often want to stand up and burst out in song with "Oh, God, you are my God and I will ever praise you!"

And today despite what is going on in the world: Darfus, children shooting parents, teens shooting other teens, tsunamis, Katrina, suicides and pornography, because of God's faithfulness to me in the past, and the the fact that his faithfulness continues through all generations, I believe he is awake and that his love endures forever and and that no one and nothing can snatch me or you out of his hand. I am covered by his tent. Each step I take, each breath I breathe, I am preserved by God.
And thanks to the resurrection, I look forward to the day in the future when I can stand before the throne and praise my chief Shepherd.

As I close I would like to read a slightly modified prayer by Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia entitled

Yours and Not Ours

You in our past: gracious
steadfast
reliable
faithful.
You were a mouthful on the lips of our grandparents.

The hard part is you in our present.
For after the easy violations we readily acknowledge
then come the darker, hidden ones:
we are aware that our appearance does not match reality;
aware that our walk is well behind talk;
aware that we are enmeshed in cruelty systems
well hidden, but defining;
and we have no great yearning to be hidden from them.
Forgive us for the ways in which we are bewitched,
too settled, at ease in false places.

You in our present: gracious
steadfast
reliable
faithful.
We in the shadows asking you to do what you have always done;
to be whom you have always been,

that we may do what we have never dared to dream
be whom we have never imagined...
free, unencumbered, unanxious, joyous, obedient...
Yours and not ours.

From Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth; Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Fortress Press, 2003.