A Devotion for the Way Across the Water

I don’t remember the last time I saw my Uncle Mike. Maybe it was on a college trip to New Orleans in my 20s, meeting him for dinner after my friends had scattered for the night. I do remember the cards that came when our son Eli was born, along with the softest knitted blanket I’d ever felt.

He disappeared in and out of our lives for the past 20 or so years, pulled down by the tides of drug and alcohol addiction. We learned to not rely on his presence, though the ache of his absence was raw and real. He’d remember a birthday one year, Christmas the next, a card or call breaking through the months of silence. And for that moment, the connection held.

He died of a heart attack last Thursday. Though death is now what separates us, there has been a separation for many years. Goodbyes have been said, prayer lifted, bargains and arguments offered and settled.

What we had to do before Mike died was to send off the possibility of what could have been. My mother especially. Mike was her last living sibling, her last connection to her family of origin. Her farewell to him has been years in the making.

When I read the words in Psalm 77 for this week’s lectionary, I couldn’t help but think of my mother.

It is a Psalm of lament, a crying out to God as the chaos and pain of life encircles him:

“I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me.

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; 

 my soul refuses to be comforted.

I think of God, and I moan; I meditate, and my spirit faints. Selah

You keep my eyelids from closing; I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago.

I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit:

“Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love ceased forever? Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” Selah

And I say, “It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.

I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is so great as our God?

You are the God who works wonders; you have displayed your might among the peoples.

With your strong arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Selah

When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled.

The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side.

The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook.”

As my eyes found their way to the last verses, I read:

“Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.

You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

As people of God, we can be quick to remember to sing the songs of praise, to call out to God with happiness and thanksgiving when our circumstances turn joyful; but God, is present, closer to us than our own breath in the times of sorrow and pain.

For the psalmist, and perhaps for us when we find ourselves in times of exile and lack, comfort is found in remembering how God has shown up in the past. Even when we didn’t see God moving, God’s path moved across the waters, parted the seas, made a way where there was not a way before.

In the past few weeks, many of you have shared that you are experiencing times of deep pain and grief. I want to acknowledge that, in the midst of the holy heaviness of recovery work, your own stories and family concerns and struggles do not stop. I don’t know what storm or long night or joy or death or unanswered prayer you each carry with you this day. What I do know is that like the psalmist, it is our grief that the Lord Most High carries, and can change.

My prayer for you is the same one I pray for my mom, that falls from my lips when I am grief stricken and sorrow weary:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

May God reveal your way across the water, to comfort, to peace, to home.

With you on the journey,

Amy

P.S. If one of the things that you are grieving is the current human rights atrocity that is occurring at our southern border, please read this article from UMCOR’s director of Global Migration, Rev. Jack Amick.