One of my favorite places to visit is Fort Davis in the Davis Mountains of Texas. It is an area that has its own kind of beauty. There aren’t many trees larger than the small and scrubby little trees that have taken hold in that semi-arid land.
In Psalm 63, which is entitled “A Psalm of David, when he was in the Judean Desert,” the psalmist speaks of the soul’s hunger and thirst — and the rich feast that feeds the soul.
One day an expert in the law approached Jesus and asked a question to “test” him: “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
One of the central scripture readings in the season of Lent is the 51st Psalm. Part of that psalm reads, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”
Our scripture reading comes after a challenging time for Elijah, the prophet. You can read that part of the story in the preceding verses, but suffice it to say that it was a time of intense and productive activity, relational conflict, physical exhaustion, a major success, and a crushing disappointment.
The writer Annie Dillard once said that if we truly heard the radical character of the Easter story we should go to church wearing a crash helmet.
It occurs to me that we always live in an in-between time — no longer the past and not yet the future. We live between past and future.
How do you most often use the word “hope” or hear the word being used?
In today’s reading, we have Jesus’ words preparing his disciples for the lonely time when he is no longer physically with them.