Thursday, February 23, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) – (oops, these scriptures are for Friday … the fog continues)
Ash Wednesday in the rain
Can wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away, and then they will fast.
I walked around in something of a fog yesterday. Up at 6, all dressed up, off with four wedding scripts to the prison in Danville to meet the four ladies who called me over the last six weeks, asking me to officiate their weddings. Their fiancees awaited them, and it all worked out just fine. In a couple of hours, all of them were married.
Jeremiah 29:11 covers couples too. I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you together, and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future together. Call on me together, come and pray to me together, and I will listen to you.
There were tears. Mostly from the guys, wearing their dress blues. “Will you love this woman, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health and forsaking all others, be faithful to her so long as you both shall live?
The daughter and sister of one inmate came along with his new bride from Chicago. As I proceeded through the ceremony, his sister repeated, “… forsaking all others.” As she looked at him she continued, “be faithful to her so long as you both shall live.” She cocked her head and nodded. I laughed. Of course she knows him pretty well.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God you will not spurn.
It rained all morning, and all afternoon as well. My last bride looked out the window and said something like, “Look how God is pouring down his blessing on us! Like mercy, like peace, like love.” No reason for me to feel foggy, not with wisdom like that coming from all corners of the room.
This is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed breaking every yoke.
In the car reunited with my cell phone I saw that a friend had replied to an earlier text, “Sure, I’d be happy to see you today!” He’s a farmer who lives fifteen minutes east of Danville. I drove on over. We talked about important family matters. We watched it rain through the windows. “This is so good for us,” he said. “The ground is dry dry dry. There were tractors in a few fields yesterday! Too soon. Too soon. This rain blesses all of us.”
Home again, I had another fascinating conversation with a friend, then slept awhile. Soundly. An alarm woke me in time for Mass at St. Patrick’s. Got my ashes. Another meeting at home, and then driving through the dark, lights reflecting off the rain-swept streets, with Marc to Cracker Barrel.
Cracker Barrel was full of Amish men and a few women, and us. The fire blazed. We ate meatloaf and country fried steak (with three sides), for a very reasonable price. I felt like we’d been driving down the interstate and just stepped into this cozy fireside restaurant for a hot blue-plate special, then off again into the fog.
Except for us, it was just a few blocks home.
Thank you, Jesus, for this sweet Ash Wednesday with Marc and friends, a beautiful church liturgy and a warm plate of food at the end.
Share your bread with the hungry, clothe the naked when you see them, do not turn your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed. Then you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am!”
(Isaiah 58, Psalm 51, Amos 5, Matthew 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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