In my suburban upbringing, Thanksgiving was one of the most wholesome days of the year.  It was the rare day when the family was all together without any work to get done, other than to cook a fantastic meal.  My father would be up early preparing the big turkey, the smells of garlic and thyme and butter filling the bright kitchen.  And my mother would work her culinary magic whipping potatoes, adding bacon to green beans, and making homemade crust for several pumpkin pies.  We would eat at the dining table with a view of the Temecula countryside out the bay window, and we would stop before the meal and everyone would say something they were thankful for.  My mother would usually give thanks for her family, and my dad, a longtime navy man, would express thanks for the soldiers overseas that were making difficult sacrifices for our safety.  It was the one time per year, then, that I would hear my father offer a prayer.  Then it was on to football, either watched, or organized with a group of friends, and my mom scouring the newspapers for Black Friday shopping deals.  The whole day had a sense of balance, rest, and appropriate, reflective gratitude for a comfortable existence that was often easy to take for granted.  It was easily one of my favorite family days of the year.

But the origins of Thanksgiving are quite different.  Rather than a season of affluence and comfort finding its consummation in thanks, the origins of Thanksgiving are even more striking, expressing gratitude, not in times of prosperity, but rather in times of vulnerability and need.

We are probably familiar with the conception of the thanksgiving feast linked to the historic gathering of English pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians in the fall of 1621.  The thanksgiving was powerfully justified, for the harsh winter before had taken the lives of half the colonists, and without the agricultural support of the Wampanoag, the rest of the pilgrims would likely not have survived.  The first thanksgiving included the sentiment of ‘God thank you that we are alive, when so many of us have already died.’

And when thanksgiving was made a national holiday, it similarly had this intense depth.  The writer and editor of the nation’s largest women’s magazine of the mid-19th century, Sarah Josepha Hale, began writing editorials and personal letters to five U.S. presidents for 17 years from 1846-1863 promoting a national holiday of thanks.  Her last letter was to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and finally found its mark.  In the middle of the host horrific war on American soil, instead of declaring a day of mourning or fasting, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 26th, 1863.  The statement from his administration, at the close of the bloodiest year in American history that saw approximately 200,000 casualties, proclaimed:

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.  To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.  In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity… peace has been preserved with all (other) nations, the order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict…  No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.  They are the gracious gifts of the Highest God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

The day was then encouraged to be a day of worship, thanks, and prayers for healing for the nation.  Thanksgiving is appropriate in times of peace and comfort, and it shines even brighter in the face of starvation or war.  Truly, there is no situation in which we cannot find something good to give thanks for.

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you      (1 Thes 5:18).

Together in the Journey,
Fr. Cam Lemons

When I was five or six years old my parents gave me the new Nintendo video game system with a game that would become a classic, Super Mario Brothers.  There was a level of magic in the experience for both parents and child.  As I sat in front of the TV, I was able to control the character on the screen!  My little mind was immersed in a world of dragons and fireballs and electronic theme music that I can still recall all these years later.  The experience was magic for my parents because the little Italian Mario was a free babysitter.  The game would occupy me for hours at a time, and keep me from fighting with my sister, telling mom I’m bored, or wandering off into the neighborhood.  What could possibly go wrong?

In Christopher Marlowe’s 1592 book Dr. Faustus, the title character grows discontent with traditional forms of human knowledge and decides to learn magic from the devil at the cost of his soul.  For a few decades he is able to grow in power, captivating the attention of others, doing marvelous things like making antlers grow out of the head of a knight and bringing back an image of Alexander the Great.  But tragically his time comes and his soul is beyond redemption, his humanity had been consumed.

We marvel at technology, and rightly so.  It makes our lives easier in many ways and can save us tons of time.  I’ve read of one woman at the time of the invention of the washing machine who would just pull up her chair and watch the machine work, amazed at what it could do, and thankful that she was no longer washing the clothes by hand an hour each day.  But the rapid introduction of technology into our lives is a social experiment with a shadow side.  Like the Batman villain Two-Face, is has a side that distorts our humanity.  And this is particularly dangerous because it is a blind spot that our culture and the Church understands very little.

The games and shows that appear not just on our televisions, but now in our pockets through smart phones have been professionally designed to grab and hold our attention.  They get financially rewarded when they can make their products more addictive.  It is like we are all walking around with little slot machines in our pockets.  And our kids and grandkids are particularly susceptible.  The use of social media like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat allow teenagers to feel connected to their peers, but recent studies show with increased use there are higher levels of depression, anxiety and lower levels of wellbeing, especially in females.  Some girls fall into self-hatred because their images get less ‘likes’ than their peers.  Other girls are infused with vanity and sell images of their bodies for the cheap price of a few extra ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’  As Jesus taught, we can “gain the world, but lose our soul” (Matt 16:26).

Maybe the biggest danger is that the hard and soul-forming work of having face-to-face relationships with our neighbors, family and friends is being replaced by hours of entertainment and quasi-relationships online.  For Christians that know that the ultimate purpose of life is to grow deep in our souls, and to know and love others, this is a threat at the core of our life’s calling.  So then, how should we navigate technology?  Going back to where this article started, with me spending a large portion of my adolescence in front of a glowing box, eventually, later in high school, I began following Christ.  And imperfectly, my use of media decreased.  I started reading more.  I learned some music.  I studied how to pray.  I decided I wanted to have kids.  I turned a few degrees toward being a producer rather than a consumer.  I still have a long way to go, and I’m as susceptible to getting pulled into hours of media as much as anyone, probably more because I was nursed on it from my childhood.
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But for followers of Jesus, we can’t be blind to the way technology is changing us.  We can confess and turn from the addictive hours in front of the glowing box.  We can make the effort to use our technology as a useful tool, rather than as a boredom fix.  Push yourself to do the hard work of putting yourself in front of real people.  Reject Dr. Faustus’ bargain.  No, we won’t take the magic at the cost of our souls.

Our contemporary celebrations of Halloween have eclipsed a valuable Christian remembrance that dates back to the early centuries of the church.  The celebration was called All Saints’ Day, and is still commemorated at different levels in the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox and Methodist traditions.  The word ‘saint’ may remind us of old statues in large cathedrals, or a formal process of declaring past Christians as worthy of commemoration and canonization.  But this is not the only definition of the term ‘saint.’  The bible sometimes uses the word to refer to all of those that have put their faith in Christ.  For example, when the apostle Paul was writing to a struggling church in Asia Minor, he addressed his letter, “unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called as saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor 1:2).  Saints were those that had been spiritually cleansed, morally forgiven, not because their lives were spotless, but because they had decided to follow the One that lived a blameless life on their behalf.

In the context of All Saints’ Day, the term ‘saint’ takes on an additional layer of historic meaning.  The origins of All Saints’ Day date back to the early centuries following Christ when the church wanted days to commemorate the martyrs that had been killed for their faith.  In the first 300 years after Christ died and was resurrected, the Roman Empire sent several waves of persecution toward the young Christian movement.  Leaders were beheaded.  Women were fed to wild beasts.  Bishops were burned in the Coliseum.  And the early church would hold days of remembrance and prayer for these courageous saints.  They were their friends, family members and pastors; and they were powerful sources of inspiration.  They helped the church hold on to their ostracized faith during difficult days.

By the year 607, when the Roman Empire had astoundingly embraced the obscure faith it once tried to destroy, Emperor Phocas presented the beautiful Pantheon temple to the pope.  The enormous statues of Jupiter and other Roman gods were heaved out of the famous building, and the pantheon was dedicated to “All Saints” who had died from Roman persecution in the early years of the Christian church.  The date of November 1st was set as the annual commemoration to remember the martyrs of Christ’s Church.  The night before All Saints’ Day a prayer vigil was held, and eventually the evening included a remembrance, not just for the martyrs, but for all the loved ones that had died in the faith.

Many pagan customs were eventually absorbed into this celebration of All Saints’ (or hallows’) Eve.  People would leave food for the dead at their place of burial.  Superstitions of the dead coming back to haunt as witches, toads or demons increased.  These ideas, rather than having their roots in Christian belief, were based in the ordinary experience of the fear of death, and concern for the afterlife.

It is obvious in our culture today which side of the celebration has become more prominent.  However, for the follower of Christ, it would be wise to glean from the Christian origins of All Saint’s Day as well.  The remembrance of the martyrs, and the faithful Christians that have gone before us is as beneficial today as it has even been.  We can take a few minutes on November 1st or the Sunday following and attend a worship service.  We could open our bible and read Hebrews 11, and remember the great saints that have gone before us.  We can pull up a short bio of a Christian martyr, like Christ’s Church has been doing annually for thousands of years.  One of my personal, maybe silly, traditions has been to write a short play commemorating a saint from the past, and preforming it with family or friends.  Over the years we have remembered in this way Squanto, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, John Wesley, Francis of Assisi, the monks of Iona, and many others.  The faithful saints and martyrs before us have left a trail of great courage, and the ultimate sacrifice.  We may need that same character forged in us for our day as well.  Let us be strengthened by their remembrance.
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Together in the journey,
Fr. Cam Lemons

Death comes to us all, but that does not mean we should embrace it as something to be celebrated.  The Scriptures tell us that death was a distortion of God’s good creation brought into the world by sin and the devil (Gen 3).  The devil now has the “the power of death” (Heb 2:14) and he seeks to weave death into all parts of our society, and he is doing it quite efficiently.  Mass killings are now common place in our society.  The horrific events are streamed onto our televisions.  Video games, movies, television shows and music turn graphic murder into popular entertainment.   Instead of boxing being the most violent sport that our culture allows, now mixed martial arts is mainstream.  Abortion and assisted suicide are considered part of our culture’s health care.  Our six year-olds play games on their phones depicting a zombie apocalypse.  Death is everywhere, and the devil rejoices.

Followers of Christ are called to stand against a culture of death.  While the devil comes to “steal, kill and destroy,” Jesus came to bring “life and that more abundantly” (John 10:10).  In the early decades after the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the first Christians were surrounded by a culture of death.  In the Roman Empire public executions were common.  Unwanted babies were cast aside.  Spectator sport in the coliseum included animals fighting to the death, soldiers killing one another, and followers of Jesus being burned at the sake.  And the united response of the followers of Jesus was to resist the culture of death.  They refused to participate in entertainment that celebrated death.  They were willing to take in and care for babies that others decided they didn’t want.  When disease and plague swept through the empire, followers of Jesus showed amazing courage to care for the diseased and dying while others fled to protect their lives.  Death didn’t hold power over the followers of Jesus.  How was this so?

In the Gospel, the good news of salvation, we are told that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, chose to be lowered under the angels for a time, and to suffer the death that humanity deserved on the cross.  He was then exalted and crowned “because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:9).  This passage goes on to tell us, “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (v 14).  Death is the enemy and it is wielded by the devil.  But God turned the script upside down by taking death upon Himself and setting free everyone that receives His sacrificial death by faith.  This conviction, not just affirmed as an idea, but embraced wholeheartedly, transformed the early followers of Jesus.  They were fearless in the face of death, knowing that even if their physical bodies were killed, their souls were cleansed and they would live forever before their beloved Lord.  This deep affirmation gave them courage to stand against and be rejected by the culture of death that surrounded them.

May followers of Christ today be so moved by the Gospel that we too are willing to stand against a culture of death.  May we celebrate life from conception until natural death.  May we resist the many ways that death and murder as fascination and entertainment want to make their way into our minds and behaviors.  And may we be thoughtful and resolute in finding ways to push killing out of our cities.
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Together in the Journey,
Fr. Cam Lemons

In what will likely be an unpopular opinion, I encourage our community to stand against the Equality Act, currently before the US Senate.  My convictions are based on the way this act will remove gender specific spaces in our society, expose vulnerable females to harm, and redefine gender legally, moving us further away from our biblical foundations as a nation.

The Equality Act is well intentioned, desiring to protect members of the gay and transgender community from discrimination in housing, employment and education.  According to the scriptures, we are all created in God’s image and deserve the dignity of being treated with respect and fairness.  Discrimination against those that believe or act differently, so long as those beliefs or actions don’t harm others, should never be accepted in our nation.

But the ways these protections are being proposed in the current bill will change our society in several detrimental ways.  The Equality Act will legally redefine gender to be a personal choice rather than a biological reality.  If a person says they are male, irrespective of their biological gender, they will be considered male before the laws of our nation.  If someone says they identify as female, legally, they must be allowed in all female spaces.  This has far-reaching, detrimental ramifications for women.
Women’s sports will no longer be a place of fair and competitive contests.  Any male, without requiring a gender reassignment surgery, who says they identify as female, could be allowed to race, or fight against female competitors.  One female MMA fighter, who was born a male, was allowed to fight in the women’s division and broke her opponent’s skull.  The victim, Tamika Brents, said afterward, “I’ve never felt so overpowered in my entire life.”

Female specific places will no longer be safe for women.  Men, including violent offenders, in jails and prisons that say they identity as females would now have to be held in female sections of the prison.  Bathrooms, locker rooms and showers would no longer be exclusive to those that are biologically female.  Battered women’s shelters, with women still dealing with the trauma of violent encounters with men, would now have to accept biological men.

In addition to leaving vulnerable women exposed, this bill also fails to make provisions for religious organizations.  If a church school doesn’t want to hire a transgender individual because that person’s lifestyle goes against the church’s deeply held religious beliefs, they would be breaking the law.  They would face lawsuits, fines and possible closure.

This is just a brief example of the many ways this bill would change our society.  At its foundation, it is based on a misunderstanding of gender.  Gender isn’t a choice a person makes, it is gift that God gives when we are conceived.  The scriptures say that “God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27).  Part of the beauty and strength of humanity is our maleness and femaleness.  This isn’t something to be diminished, ashamed of, or manipulated.  It is something to be explored, embraced and celebrated. 

Those that suffer with gender dysphoria (GD), the feeling of not being at home with one’s biological gender, deserve our compassion and support.  This can be a very serious psychological issue, and should never be dismissed or ignored.  However, the current encouragement to resolve the tension through gender reassignment treatment and operations, is a false hope.  These options often relieve tension in the short term, but the studies of individuals over the course of several years have many warnings.  In the most comprehensive study, conducted in Sweden, which is generally very supportive of the transgender, fifteen years after reassignment surgery, individuals had a suicide rate 20 times that of comparable peers, as well as significantly higher rates of psychological disorders.

We would be wise to put our brakes on the Equality Act, and to think more critically and carefully about the role of gender in our society, and the far-reaching implications of redefining it.  Please join me in calling our congressional representatives to voice our opposition of this bill.  If you would like assistance in knowing how to call and speak to a congressional office, you can visit the "calling congress" tab on the website of StTimothysBishop.com.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:6-7

We were staying in a house in Mammoth when we received the shock.  I was stepping out of the shower and I could hear my wife’s turbulent voice in the adjacent room.

“Are you serious?  It isn’t possible!”  Silence while she listened to the person on the other end of the phone.  “Could it be wrong?”

I quickly wrapped myself in a towel, as my mind ran to put pieces together, speculating what was causing the chaos on the phone call.  Eventually, like Lego pieces clicking together, I came to the true conclusion, ‘my wife has Covid.’

She finished talking with the nurse and I held her close as she stood with the look of trauma on her face.

Of all the members in my family, there was one in particular that we needed to keep from getting the virus; that was my wife.  With her chronic lupus condition and her propensity toward pneumonia, she was in the high-risk category to be badly affected by the disease.

We had been taking extra precautions to limit her contact with others, and I had been praying everyday that she wouldn’t get the disease.  And then she did.
We don’t know how she got the virus.  And one of the great mercies of my life: her body has reacted extremely well.  Her symptoms are mild and she continues to improve.

My mind speculates on what could have been, and I shutter.  My empathy for those that are dying, or have lost loved ones to this disease has deepen like a steel shovel breaking into hard soil.  Not everyone has been as fortunate as my family has been.  And the number of infections continues to multiply in our state and across the globe.
It is both a time of gratitude in my life, and a time of anxiety.  And God’s word gives life-giving direction amid the difficulty.  In the letter of Philippians we are encouraged to take every worry, every anxiety, every concern and burden to God in prayer. 

One of the great mistakes we make in our prayer lives to think that God, our marvelous Creator, is looking for shiny, polished people that come into his presence with their lives all put together.  I find the more specific I can be with my struggles when I pray, the more of God’s powerful presence I get to experience.  In our current difficulty it might sound something like this:  Father, I am prone to anxiety.  I worry about my loved ones, who are vulnerable, getting sick.  I feel fearful about the direction of our nation, and our economy.  My heart breaks for those that are dying.  I feel impotent to change the direction of these enormous burdens.

God is looking for real people to be in relationship with Himself, not with cardboard cutouts that have a smile painted on.  And once we come to him with our real struggles and worries, he draws near to us (James 4:8).  It is important that after expressing our concerns and negative feelings to God that we don’t just say ‘amen,’ and rush back into the chaos.  Give God time to respond.  Allow his peace to start to move into your heart and your mind.  Open up the Scriptures to allow him to speak His hope and promises into your life.  See if you can move from a place of fear to a place of gratitude.  As bad as things are, we can always acknowledge they could be worse.  Take for instance where my heart is at today:  Father, in the midst of this chaos, including isolation, cabin fever, and inconveniencing friends and family, thank you that it isn’t worse.  Thank you that I’m not at the hospital today, or the graveside.  Thank you that you’ve promised that even the hardest things in our lives will be used for good in your purposes, for those that love you.  May you redeem even this tribulation. Amen.

Together in the Journey,
​Fr. Cam

My father was a patriot.  He had grown up in a poor section of Riverside in a dysfunctional family.  For his eighteenth birthday he was given a suitcase, and told to find a new place to live.  He chose to enlist in the Navy, where he served three stints in Vietnam.  He was trained as an electrician and then used his GI Bill to become a civil engineer.  He served another 20 years in the reserves including a call to active duty following 9/11.  My father didn’t always agree with the decisions that America and its leaders made, but he wouldn’t criticize them.  “America’s been good to me,” was his default reaction.
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Truly, America has been good to most of us.  It has given us a relatively safe place to live.  It has given us opportunities for education, and pursuing meaningful employment.  It has helped us preserve our health, raise families if we choose, and to believe and worship according to our conscience.  When you put our nation in the context of the way most kingdoms of the world through history have functioned, we’ve been blessed to have such a place to live.  (Not to mention it has given us the Sierra, and the Pacific Ocean and the Grand Canyon).

But that doesn’t mean we can’t seek to continue improving for the better.  It is a mistake to think that we must choose between affirming America’s strengths or criticizing her faults.  Any successful business leader in our prosperous nation would tell you for them to continue their success, they must regularly take an honest inventory of the state of the business.  What are we doing right?  Where are we making mistakes?  How can we improve?  What can we celebrate?

It is this elusive mix of appreciation and critique that moves a healthy organization forward.  And it is this level of common sense that our nation needs from us at this critical time.  One of the cautionary moments in Israel’s history that has been preserved for us in the Scriptures, came during the reign of King Jehoiakim at the end of the 7th century BC.  The nation, for several generations, had been drifting away from the faith of their ancestors.  But they still had a prosperous nation.  A ragged prophet by the name Jeremiah came warning the nation that they needed to do away with the injustices, abuses and deception of their nation.  They needed to return to true worship of the Almighty Creator, and to living out his just principles, or else they would face judgment.  What was the response from the privileged and ruling classes in Jerusalem?

“The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jeremiah 7:4)!  The people pointed to their nation’s history, and the victories that God had given them in the past, including the construction of the glorious temple, and they claimed they were protected.  They refused to look critically at the state of their nation.  They clung to the fact that they had been a blessed, and God honoring nation.  They weren’t willing to consider that God wanted them to continue growing and improving.  Eventually the judgement predicted by Jeremiah fell upon them and Jerusalem was overthrown by the Babylonians.

God honors a people that are willing to appreciate and preserve what has been given in the past, while continuing to make improvements toward a just and equitable society in the present.  We are at a critical moment in our nation’s history.  There is no shame in being American, and in being a patriot.  We come from a strong and beautiful nation, with a rich history.  Let us love our nation enough to work toward making it a place that is safe, and equal for all peoples, young and old, black and white, healthy and unhealthy.  May America continue to be beautiful as we choose to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another.
Together in the Journey,
Fr. Cam Lemons

I remember the pit in my stomach as the elderly lady at the podium recounted the words of her professor at the University of Oklahoma, “You don’t have to try so hard.  I won’t give a student of your color anything higher than a ‘C’.”  I remember the shock I received when Obama was announced as the winner of the 2008 presidential election.  The church was politically conservative, and had even been preaching such in the weeks leading up to the election.  But when the room heard that a black man could be elected President of the United States, it visually erupted like a cork bursting from a champagne bottle.  I remember the disbelief I felt when my new housemate was pulled over for the third time in our first month of living together.  He was never breaking the law, never received a ticket or a warning, he was just a young black man driving a nice car.  I lived in that neighborhood for 10 years and never got pulled over unless I was speeding or talking on the phone while driving.  I still experience these jolts occasionally, like this week when I read about a National Beareau of Economic Research (NBER) study that sent out 5,000 resumes to American employers.  The resumes were the same, but on half they put stereotypically white names, and on half they put stereotypically black names.  The white resumes were 50% more likely to get a callback for an interview.
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These experiences came to me as an adult, and as such, they were hard to incorporate into my view of the world.  I had grown up in a rural, predominantly Anglo corner of California.  In my world, everyone seemed to have the same education and the same opportunities, and if someone worked hard enough they had a considerable chance to be financially and vocationally successful.  Race wasn’t talked about much; it wasn’t even thought of much.  It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties and was hired on as an associate pastor at a large African-American church that I began to understand, in part, the experience of racism.  Over the course of four years I was steeped in the black experience of America.  I enjoyed the passion, the deep love, the wonderful music and the meaningful friendships that were formed through this season.  But I was also grieved.  I was grieved that my new friends were constantly hounded by the question of race.  Did I get pulled over because I was doing something wrong, or because I was black?  Did my resume get turned down because it wasn’t as good, or because my name is Jamal?  Don’t act like a fool in this restaurant, because if you do, they won’t say, ‘there were some silly young people in there,’  they will say, ‘there were some crazy black kids in there,’ and it will reinforce what people in our nation think about us.  My black friends had to think about being black all the time, and it was exhausting.  It led some to feel angry, and it led most to feel powerless and an outsider in their own country.  The country where they were born.  The country for whom they served in the military.  The country that said all people had an equal God-given right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Racism in America in the 21st century is a phenomenon that can be measured and shown in numbers.  But more importantly, it is a subjective experience that is felt daily by millions of citizens.  We exist in two different experiences of America.  One of us has the choice to think about race.  The other has the race question looming over them several times a day.  One America, two different worlds.

There is an opportunity in this thundercloud.  One of the things that makes America great is the way we have chosen to set the Biblical ideal of the equality of all people as our nations’ standard.  This belief, so widely held in the world today, has its origin in Genesis 1:26, in which God makes humanity in the ‘imageo dei,’ the image of God.  Each person, the bible says, has God’s likeness imprinted in their being.  This means the church is called to be at the forefront of standing against racism, in all its personal and systemic forms.  For the Christian, there is more at stake than trying to make an equitable society.  We believe when we dehumanize another, or when we stay comfortable in a system that devalues a group, we aren’t just hurting them, we are sinning against God and marring a part of his likeness expressed on earth.  When we stand up for a group that is discriminated against, when we reach out to an individual that has a different experience of American than we do, we are embracing and drawing close to part of God’s self-revelation entrusted to us.  Stand with me against racism.  God is there.

Together in the Journey,
Fr. Cam Lemons

This past week a beloved leader of one of our churches passed away, and my father, one of my best friends, was put on hospice.  Neither one of the illnesses seem to be Covid related, but they did thrust me personally into the heartache that many in our nation are facing right now with the illness and loss of loved ones.  In a culture of affluence, and amazing technologies, we get used to controlling the world around us in ways that increase our comfort and ease.  We push a button and our house cools, avoiding record April heat.  He turn a key and we can speed down the road to get food brought to our towns from Chile, Australia and France.  Most of our lives we are able to ignore the unpleasant reality of dying.  But as the scriptures say in Job 5:7, “Man is born to trouble, as sparks fly upward.”  Just as a fire will inevitably produce orange specks in the rising smoke and ash, so will the human life produce times of suffering and eventually death.  These difficulties are compounded when we believe the modern western narrative that suffering can be avoided and death can be delayed.  If we expect not to suffer, it makes the suffering even more difficult.  When early followers of Jesus were suffering for their faith, St. Peter wrote, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal… as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet 4:12).  Hardship in this life is the lot of humanity, but we don’t have to fear it.

In Kübler-Ross’ classic study, On Death and Dying, she observes the 5 stages that often accompany the dying process.  These stages can be experienced by the dying person, their loved ones, and their care givers.  The stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  They don’t necessarily come in order, and individuals experience these cycles differently.  But they can be helpful ways of processing and talking about an issue that is difficult for many people.  The denial stage includes the initial shock, and sometimes avoidance, of losing a loved one.  One of the difficulties that I experienced in the past week was the realization that sometimes you lose a loved one long before they take their last breath.  I wasn’t prepared for that, and it thrust me into this stage of grief.  During the anger stage it is common to experience irritability and anxiety.  Why couldn’t something have been done about this?  The bargaining stage includes a search to make sense of the situation.  It can be assisted by reaching out to others and sharing the story of what you’ve gone through with your loved one’s death.  The depression stage can include feeling overwhelmed by facing life without your loved one, feeling helpless, hostility or a desire to disappear behind closed doors.  If we know that this a natural part of mourning and grief, it can keep us from despair when we go through these feelings.  The acceptance stage entails having a new plan to carry on.  Options are explored and some traction is gained with finding a different way forward.

When the stages of grief are explained, they may seem neat and orderly, but they are nothing of the sort.  CS Lewis explained it well in A Grief Observed,
“For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?  But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
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Truly the loss of a loved one is an amputation of sorts.  We have lost a part of ourselves when the other has died.  And there is no easy way to avoid this suffering for those that have given part of their heart to another.  When we consider death in light of the Christian faith, there is some comfort in the conviction that death isn’t the end.  There is the promise of eternal life for those in Christ.  But maybe what is more helpful when we are in the grieving process, is to hear God say through tears, “I’ve lost a child.  My only Son died.  I understand what you’re going through.”

This post was written by Michael Dorame of Trinity Church, Lone Pine.

At Matthew 17:20 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could move a mountain; nothing would be impossible”. For faith to become a force, it has to become an act of believing. So, how do we couple faith with belief to eliminate doubt? The apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 5:6 that faith works or is activated or energized by love; it is important that faith expresses itself in love. We can learn about faith and try to perfect our faith but still not have power in our prayer life unless we know that love is the force that flows through faith.

In I Corinthians 13:2, Paul stipulates that even if he possessed enough faith to move mountains, that without love, God’s love in him, he would be nothing. In Galatians 5:22 we’re taught that love is a Fruit of the Holy Spirit and in I Corinthians 14:1 we’re taught to make love our highest goal when earnestly seeking the Fruits of the Spirit. Once we understand and become determined to practice the Fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, this Fruit manifests itself as caring about others. True faith-driven intercessory prayer is then powered by our love for others.

The more we pray using the Holy Spirit Fruit of love, the more we realize that there is supernatural power in our prayer life.  At James 5:16, we’re taught that the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. As we experience the results of love-driven prayer, we find ourselves engaging more and more in using prayer as a means of communicating our daily circumstances with Our Lord. At I Thessalonians 5:17, we’re instructed to pray without ceasing.

Over the years, my personal transformation has caused me to talk more with Jesus, reverentially, as my ever present Lord. The Bible is replete with examples of people who had a personal relationship with God. They’re given to us as living examples, thereby enabling us to emulate their personal relationship and powerful prayer life but it requires a commitment on our part to read and study the Word daily; personalize, internalize and walk in the Word as we talk and enjoy our relationship with Jesus; then the Holy Spirit gives us insight about what to pray for.

Yes, I believe that our Creator is listening to and answering our prayers. As one of many examples, one of the times in history when the Israelites were disobedient to the Lord, king Solomon interceded for them with a prayer asking for forgiveness and restoration or favor.  At II Chronicles 7:12-14 it’s written, “Then one night the Lord appeared to Solomon and said, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this temple as the place for making sacrifices.  At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls or command grasshoppers to devour your crops or send plagues among you. Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land”.

I know that many believers worldwide are praying fervently and earnestly for those who are affected by the current plague of COVID-19 and we as “One Nation Under God” are interceding with our prayers as well. I’ll conclude with my personal intercessory prayer: Dearest Father God, please endow us, your people, with the virtue of humility which blesses us with the strength to provide your loving care to others in their time of need, we ask that you bless our national governing leadership with the knowledge of what is written in Your most Holy Word, “The greatest among you must be a servant; but those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted” Matthew 23:11-12. In the Name of Jesus we pray,
Thank You Father, Amen.