St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer –
Sunday – Clergy, Staff, Wardens and Vestry and the Rector Search (click HERE to read the Rector Search prayer)
(as always you can click “Prayer Instructions” for online resources to help with praying the Daily Office)
The Sunday of General Convention (GC) is always the United Thank Offering (UTO) ingathering, where the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) representatives present the UTO gifts from their respective dioceses. Today they presented checks totaling over 4 million dollars – all of which goes back into local communities in the fo
rm of grants for outreach projects.
This Eucharist is extremely well attended and always wonderful. So I will reflect on that today, rather than on Morning Prayer.
Psalm 30 appointed for today includes this verse: “You have turned my wailing into dancing;* you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.”
The Psalms contain every possible expression of emotions of the people of God – joy, despair, hate, love, blessing, confusion, fear, weeping, dancing and wailing included. This image of God turning our wailing into dancing and clothing us with joy is breath taking. Perhaps you can relate to this in your own life?
No matter what you believe about the movement in our society and our church to allow same sex marriages, I can tell you on Friday when the SCOTUS decision was announced, I literally saw with my own eyes so many couples dancing, who had been wailing for so long. They felt the power of this Psalm in a deep and personal way. They were clothed in joy.
It’s a good feeling. If you are in a wailing place in your life, may God clothe you with joy. Let this be our prayer.
