It is God who has made us...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Sacred Words
Come Unto Me
When the Journey gets too hard,
when we feel depleted,
when our compassion turns to complaining,
when our efforts toward justice and mercy
seem to get us nowhere,
it’s time to remember the humility part –
that it is God who has made us
and not we ourselves;
that saving of the world
or even one part of it
is not on our shoulders.
It is then
we can come unto him
and he will give us rest.
With rest we’ll remember
what it is we are about.
~ Kneeling in Jerusalem by Ann Weems
 
     Dear loving, faithful, broken, determined, unrelenting, hopeful Pilgrims, blessed be. May we heed well these words from another Pilgrim who knows of roads that feel uphill both ways. Her words come to us on this Tuesday before Holy Week as we are nearing the end. We have made our way through March into April. We sense that there are a few more hills and then we will be able to see into Jerusalem.  
 
     It is God who has made us and not we ourselves, perhaps these are the words that can inspire and guide us up these last hills of this year's Lenten journey. Our Almighty and Loving God has made us. Each one. Our Eternal and Gracious God who created and is creating still is not yet done with us. In creating us, you and I, God blessed us and called us "good." Each one. In our complaining times, God is creating still. In our times of feeling aimless, God is creating still. In our moments of "I can almost see it," God is creating still. All along the way, God continues to bring light to the darkness, hope to despair. 
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      It’s time to remember the humility part – how true these words are for us this day. May we be reminded again today that this work that we are called to do is loving and serving. As easy and as impossibly hard as that. To love and serve the one who calls us, each one by name. Loving and serving on these uphill roads. Loving and serving through these winter-into-spring days. Loving and serving in ways that seem small and fruitless…until…until we come to what can be seen cresting the next hill.

     We can come unto him and he will give us rest. Rest from the pressing on. With that rest, we will find ourselves walking in a way that breathing comes easy. Rest from the hurrying and scurrying. In that rest, we will know what is best and do the next right thing. Rest from the burden of fulfilling all the expectations. Rest from feeling we must be in the lead. With that rest, we will trust that all along the way, we have been led.