Dear friends,
I'll always remember standing in the midst of the Mathare' slum for the first time searching for some connection between a gracious God and what lay before my eyes. A man who died in the night had been placed on the curb, his body lying on a concrete slab, waiting for city pickup. Unclothed children hovered over a small contaminated creek, trying to snag a minnow or two for their next meal. An elderly woman squatted street-side, selling fish bones (a penny a piece) for soup. It was deeply disorienting.
Annie Dillard, a good, strong writer who grew up Presbyterian, continues to deal with questions of theology and never backs away from anything human. She wrote a remarkable little book, Holy the Firm. It's almost poetry. Dillard writes,
"The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead. It all comes together in a twinkling. You have to admire the gag for its symmetry...has the one great god abandoned us to...time's tumult of occasions..." (p.43). At times it can certainly seem that way.
For the next few weeks we'll focus our worship life on the book of Psalms. Often called "The Prayer Book of the Bible," the Psalmists bring the full range of human emotion before God with unflinching honesty. We'll start with a Psalm of Lament, one Jesus used when on the cross and which I consulted often when trying to come to terms with Mathare'. You can read the whole thing here, but I invite you to seriously consider just this verse: "For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him." (Psalm 22:24). In addition to considering these words, we'll observe "Children of the Covenant" when all the children born into our congregation during the last twelve months are presented and prayed over in worship. It's one of my favorite moments of the year. We'll also have great music, baptisms, and communion in the Chapel service where Joan will be preaching.
It promises to be a good morning, and we'll even have you out in plenty of time for Sunday at the Masters!
See you Sunday,
Bob Henderson, senior minister | 
