Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Reflecting on Psalm 119
The fires all over the west have been awful, and those of us who live far from them are still eating ashes with our corn when we dare to have dinner outside. Our eyes burn and our throats hurt. And the flames are hundreds of miles away. Remember your mercies, Lord.
We’re parched for water, but hurricanes are dumping massive, unmanageable tons of it on the already flooded U.S. Gulf Coast. Huge glaciers are melting on both sides of the globe. The oceans are rising, with no end in sight. Remember your mercies, Lord.
Wasn’t it HOT all summer? Record, scorching heat made our house an oven. It’s hard for me to manage the stairs down to our deliciously cool basement, so my sweet husband Ben stayed upstairs with me and rigged up fans and ice packs and all kinds of low-tech schemes to get the temperature down. Remember your mercies, Lord.
My nephew Bryan, after working every short-order cook job in his town on the Western Slope, finally got a prestigious job as a chef at a high-end restaurant. One month later he was exposed to COVID, and is now home for the duration, with a low-grade fever and high-grade anxiety about making the mortgage. Eight million other U.S. restaurant workers know the feeling. Remember your mercies, Lord.
In spite of it all, I still believed that all things would be well. And then the birds started falling from the sky. And now I cling to Psalm 25 like the life raft it has always been. In every age, through every drought and famine and disease, we pray with all who have gone before us: Remember your mercies, Lord.
How are you managing your anxiety during these unsettling times?
Kathy McGovern ©2020