Word, music and hope-filled mystery

The three hour service on Good Friday 2011 was refreshing in word, music and silence. Yet because I had things-to-do (reading and some choir singing) I didn’t really begin to relax and listen until the third hour.

After the thousands of goodly and Godly words, the pages of glorious music, and the companionable silence, what I came away with was a renewed sense of the hope-filled mystery of it all.

From 1 Corinthians

“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . . God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

. . .  and in this closing prayer:

In the time between the passing of what was and the birth of what will be we find ourselves uncertain-a little lost. We grieve what has gone, and we do not know what will replace it.

It is a waiting time, a hopeful time and the one thing we can hold on to is this, You were there with what was, you will be with what waits to be born, and You are here, in the in-between time. And so we wait, we hope and we worship.  Amen.

(© 2008 Local Church Ministry Team, United Church of Christ. Reproduced with permission.)