Isaiah 62: 1-5 (links validated 11/28/24a)

In the opening chapters of L.M. Montgomery’s beloved classic, Anne of Green Gables, we meet a young orphaned girl, full of rapturous dreams and agile imagination, on her way to what she believes will be her forever home. However, when she arrives, she is thrown from the highest of hopes to the “depths of despair” to learn that Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had, in fact, asked for a boy to be sent and had no intention of keeping a girl. Stern Marilla shakes the child out of her bevy of tears by asking what seemed to sensible Marilla a fairly straight-forward question, “What’s your name?” Only to find herself engaged in the following back-and-forth: “Will you please call me Cordelia?” “Call you Cordelia! Is that your name?” “No-o-o-o, it’s not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It’s such a perfectly elegant name.” “I don’t know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn’t your name, what is?” “Anne Shirley … but oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can’t matter much to you what you call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromantic name.” “Unromantic fiddlesticks! … Anne is a good plain sensible name. You’ve no need to be ashamed of it.” “Oh, I’m not ashamed of it, only I like Cordelia much better … but if you call me Anne please call me Anne spelled with an e.”

In her memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles is bowled over one day when her thoroughly secular life gets transformed into a life devoted to Jesus through the simple act of her eating the bread of communion in a San Francisco Episcopal church into which she just happened to wander one Sunday morning. Miles was uncertain what compelled her to go to the Table in the first place, and she surely was convinced that a simple piece of bread would not do anything for her, and yet no sooner did the bread enter her mouth and Jesus filled her mind and heart. It really was, as it turned out, just what the ministers claimed: the bread of life. Of life. And it fed her in a way nothing ever had...

Philip Wogaman is a professor of ethics and the former dean of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. I read least week that, following the earthquake, he began class with this question: 'What is the central theme of the Bible?'[1] The students responded the ways most of us would, I think: love, forgiveness, salvation. We could think of more along this line. The one answer he did not receive was the word hope. So he lectured on hope as the message of the resurrection. It is the biblical message declaring there is always a new day on its way. It is the message that no matter how tragic life may be, the possibilities for new beginnings are woven into the darkest of times; which does not discount the severity of Haiti’s present agony. What it does mean is that in the midst of even horrible circumstances there still exists the possibility for new beginning. A death toll that, by some forecasts, ultimately could be as high as 500,000 people may be too much for us to comprehend usefully. But factor each death down to one individual, each becomes a unique person who no longer lives among us. It is one person who will never enjoy living into his or her twilight years or have children or dream dreams of achievement. And in all this there will always be the question: “Why did God allow this to happen?”...

Fred Craddock told the story of a time he and his wife were having dinner at a restaurant in Tennessee, when an old man started talking to them, asking them how they were doing and if they were enjoying their visit. When the old man asked Dr. Craddock what he did for a living, Dr. Craddock told the older gentleman that he was a Christian minister; and the old man said, “I owe a great deal to a minister of the Christian church.” The old man sat down at their table and started to explain that he was born without knowing who his father was; and at the time when he was growing up in the early twentieth century, not knowing who his father was made him feel a great deal of shame. One day, in his early teens, he began to attend a little church back in the mountains; and for some reason, he really liked the pastor so much that he decided to go back again, and then again. In fact, he started attending just about every week. But his shame went with him every time he went. This poor little boy would always arrive late and leave early in order to avoid talking to anyone. But one Sunday, before he could get out, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to see the preacher, a big tall man, looking down at him. He thought he knew what the preacher was thinking, and that he was probably going to ask whose son he was. But before he could say anything the preacher told him that he knew he was. “You’re a child of God,” the preacher said. “I see a striking resemblance. Now go claim your inheritance.” Fred Craddock was so moved by the story that he had to ask the old man his name. “Ben Hooper,” and Fred Craddock recognized him as the two-term governor of Tennessee...