Is it me or is time rushing by too fast? It's already Labor Day and it seems like summer just started. No matter. One of the gifts of connecting with our Creator is that it is always "now" and I pray that your "now" is wonderful.
There's so much going on around Hope that I can't pack it into this note and, even if I could, you'd probably not have time to read it. So, today, I offer you some snippets. Below you'll find an addendum to last week's report on our friend Miguel, a note about Nephew Antonio who called last Sunday, and a quick reflection on the March on Washington, MLK, and discipleship.
Over there in the left hand column, we ask you to save a date, offer up our song of the week, update you on the Our House funding effort, and offer you an opportunity to forward this epistle to a friend. While you're at it, we ask that you "like" us us on Facebook. . . .
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Miguel update . . .
 Last week we told you about our friend Miguel who stopped by to see us. In his ninth month of sobriety, he's been working hard to continue life in a new direction with the help of Phoenix House. Well, Miguel called on Wednesday to tell us that he'd gotten a job at a small meatpacking operation. "It's hard work but it's good," he said. "I'm very happy that I got this job. Pray for me." |
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Finding love in a restaurant
 Nephew called last Sunday. Well, that's not really his name and he's not really a nephew but Antonio is the same age as our kids and very dear to us so it seemed natural to make him a member of the family. After trying every program in the Hudson Valley, Antonio found a long-term alcohol rehab program in Queens where he changed his life. He's been clean and sober for about two years and it had been about that long since we'd heard from him.
"I'm doing well . . . it's been really good," he told us. "I've been working in a restaurant . . . in the kitchen. I've found my love. I love working in the kitchen and he (his boss) is teaching me too cook. It's so good."
Indeed - it is so good. |
Marches, speeches and discipleship
 As I wrote my note to you last week, I couldn't help thinking about how the lectionary readings always connect so well with the events of our times. As you recall, the reading from Luke told us "when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you . . . "
There was a natural connection to be made between that passage and the 1963 March on Washington which we commemorated on Wednesday. The march was about creating a place at the table for folks who had been marginalized, denied the rights enjoyed by the majority of Americans. The march was about justice, equality . . . freedom.
Of course, the high point of the march was the speech given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What touched me was not that magnificent speech. What touched me was Dr. King himself. He was a twenty-something man with a PhD, the pastor of a fine church, a husband, and father of five young children when he was called to lead a movement. He thought things over. He weighed the costs and knew what it would take to win a nonviolent war against injustice. He put his life on hold and gave himself over to a cause that was so much larger then him. But, he wasn't the only one. So did ever one of the 250,000 people who marched on our nation's capitol that day. So did the Freedom Riders and those who were murdered and those who were ostracized by family and friends. And, are people like you who work in big and small ways to live the gospel, loving others and doing for them as, together, we work to great God's dream for this world. In next Sunday's gospel lesson - Luke 14:25-33 - Jesus tells us about the cost of discipleship. He tells us that being a disciple means letting go of the things we hold dear. And, he tells us that we need to think it over before we say "yes" or "no." Jesus makes it very hard to be his disciple. In fact, I think he makes it impossible to be a disciple. And, that's the point - it's not possible to be a disciple on our own. It's not about us and our powers and abilities. It's about confessing that 'I can't,' so that we're open to God's 'I can.' |
