By Kathleen Shrader, Resident Minister and Doctor of Nursing Practice student
In the first reading today, we are invited to ‘return to Yahweh’. In the last few months, I have felt so spiritually dry. As a nurse, I’ve been emotionally and physically over-worked, and it’s been really challenging for me to connect with friends and family outside of the healthcare field. In that lack of connection, I’ve also felt deeply disconnected from God and my spirituality. How does one find God in a pandemic? How do any of us make room for God during these times? I don’t have any answer to those questions, but I have a deep desire to ‘return to Yahweh’ and God – who is my home.
That home looks different for people of all faiths – but my hope is that whatever it is that we feel most at peace in or with, that we take time to rest in it this lenten season. I don’t know what life will look like for the remainder of the year, or after, but I hope that we all may find some sort of light, hope, and sense of warmth and home in us this season. With the knowledge that God, or light, is always with us, may we work to return to that light and love. May we trust that that light lives within us, and that we only have to open ourselves up to it to return to it. A favorite prayer of mine for difficult times was written by a holocaust prisoner in a concentration camp and it goes like this:
‘I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when I cannot feel it.
And I believe in God,
even when (s)he is silent.’
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