I always pray with joy
Second Sunday of Advent, December 9, 2018
I always pray with joy in every prayer for all of you. I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more, that you may discern more and more what is of value, that you will be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. – From Philippians 1
Of course Paul speaks intimately with his Philippians. He loves them. But Paul … he’s been down the road a piece, he’s started churches, visited synagogues, fallen into friendships, cultivated friendships. He loves so many people. He is thinking of them all. As author Wendell Berry has Jayber Crow say, “They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me.”
I hope you have thoughts of churches in the vale of your past, and visions of some of the folks who lived there with you. I certainly do. In my life there have been churches all along, where I was baptized, married, where I buried my dad. Where our kids were baptized, where we’ve sung and preached prayed and heard a thousand thousand sermons and sung a million million songs.
We moved to Waynesville, a small Illinois town, where, as it turned out, we would love and be loved as well and as deeply as anywhere else in our lives. The small old school building became a brand spanking new home-built church. So many people pitched in on this Reconstruction. I helped raise one of the first walls, fifteen of us alongside each other lifting, lifting, and setting it in place so Bill Fineran, our master carpenter from Atlanta, Georgia, could sink the all-important joining nail. Right then I felt just a little Amish.
Bill and Hazel brought their kids from Atlanta and settled in Waynesville, drawn by the magnetic love of gracious people in the countryside. Like them, we watched our children grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Some of our kids’ friends then are friends forever.
We settled into a Sabbath routine that started with dinner Saturday night, begun with a blessing time for each kiddo, then food and games and sleep. In the morning we often walked to church, down Waynesville’s main street, by the library and the bar and grocery store. It was a seven minute walk, I suppose.
So many sweet stories from those three years.
“I always pray with joy in every prayer for all of you. I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Not only Waynesville, but those in all the churches of my life … Jayber Crow’s rundown of the folks fits my memories too:
I saw them in all the times past and to come: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted. I saw them all.
In church and out, we are all God’s people. One by one, we have our stories. Every story is shaped in flesh and blood and bone, marked by smiles and frowns and tears, held together by anger and by joy, by betrayal and by trust, by our costly, chosen faith and the profound, always extravagant, gracious love of God.
Lord, each touch how precious, each smile how priceless, each word I can remember quiets my mind now, during the days when I too often feel alone and unsure of how to love. These memories of mine are just a taste of the storehouse of joy you have waiting. Let me give what I can where I can when I can, knowing how much you love me.
Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 2000, p. 165
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