Bent over woman

Sunday readings are here.

I am not preaching Sunday. Am flying to Phoenix to lead an EfM training, but I find this healing particularly poignant. A woman who is so bent down by her burdens - spiritual or physical or emotional - she cannot look up. She cannot look at the stars or the blue skies. She cannot connect with others by looking into their faces. She stares down like a wallflower at the dance. Jesus touches her and immediately she straightens up. He proclaims her a "daughter of Abraham" - includes her "in" when others want her left out. They worry that it was not done in the correct way - the rule about healing on the Sabbath is more important that this beloved daughter of God.
This is the way of Jesus - people are more important. God will not be contained by our rules.

more thoughts on Sunday

From Harry Potter – Introduction to Deathly Hallows

“Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.

“In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.” (William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude, 1702).

This seems to resonate with the readings from Hebrews about being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. The San Damiano Crucifix to me is a cross of the great cloud of witnesses.

I am also taken with Judi Boli's comments about fire in her sermon for today. One that some seeds can't grow without fire and the other about how firebreaks use fire to fight fire.

Will meditate on this and listen to NPR (always a good source for sermon material) on my 2 hour drive to Rock Springs this morning.