Reflection

Posted

Rev. Vicki Kirk Mouradian
Bell Tower Reflection for 5/22/20

Reflection

from Rev. Vicki

In this time of pandemic upheaval, I came across these prayerful words of
St. Eata (died 686), an early English abbot and bishop. The English historian Bede described him as a gentle and greatly revered man. As an administrator Eata applied his skills at the time of plague, civil disorders, and major ecclesiastical change. His thoughts ring true for us today:

If we are hardworking, but self-satisfied,
only a poor lean harvest will reward us.
Come harvest time, each one’s work
will yield what it may yield.
Lord, I am here,
pausing in the middle of the work
that is yet to do.
I look at my work, my life,
and try to shake off the weariness.

Teach me again, dear Lord,
to number my days.
Call out in me a willingness
to love and serve.
I do not know, and I
am not required to know
when I am going to die.
In fact, I have nothing to do with it.

Many a life has been injured
by the constant expectation of death.
It is life we have to do with,
not death.
The best preparation for the night
is to work diligently while the day lasts.

When days seem dark,
and I feel lonely and discouraged,
then give me glimpses of Your glory
to sustain me.

Now think of me, and I shall know
I am because You are.
Only You make the universe worth being
or any life worth living.

All my days I will grow safe,
deep in Your shadow;
strong in hope, we know Your
ways are true.

You, O Christ, are our perfect brother
Perfect in love, in courage,
in tenderness.
Call out in me
that willingness to love and serve.

Come harvest-time, each one’s work
will yield what it may yield.

But to be turned with the soil,
disrupted, replanted,
to bed down, and then
grow with God’s seasons,
seems to require the softening
of the ground with many tears.

I have learned to abandon my own plans
without complaint, though often
my ready smile lay close about
the wells of weeping.

We stretch out our hand and throw,
and many, many seeds we sow.

In truth, we do not know
where they will go,
which will take root
or when the unlikeliest ground
will return
glimpses of gold.

Sowing at times in tears,
persisting through the years,
sometimes pulled away
to go and harvest another field…

Come harvest-time. Each one’s work
will yield what it may yield.

Let us embody Your ready kindness
in our day,
for things will not be
as they were before.