A Banquet Amidst Troubles

"You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies;" Psalm 23:5

I pray that you and yours are well in this week of living through Hurricane Sandy. I hope your power is back on and invite your prayers for those who have lost loved ones, been injured, or continue to function without power and some without homes.  Power has been intermittent at Church, but we expect to have it fully restored before the all parish workday and Sunday's worship of God.

This week is a humbling reminder that for all our advances and technology, the force of nature is sometimes beyond us.  We are thankful for technology that allows us to track storms and communicate on a mass level, but the storms come and can still devastate our lives. We have a good deal of control in our lives in general, but there are times when nature or the course of our lives are challenging and difficult. All of us struggle or, as Jesus says, "In this life, troubles come" and we have to face them.

For some of us, these difficulties and troubles can become a challenge to our faith in God and we fall away, struggling to reconcile the troubles with God's grace and goodness. For others, difficulties are faced as passing moments and we trust that God will help us through. But here is the promise of God in this week's meditation on the 23rd Psalm: God prepares a banquet in the presence of our enemies, in the face of people or circumstances that trouble us. We can expect that troubles come or that circumstances and people may work against us. And though God allows us to face these troubles, we do not face them alone and He prepares a banquet, a celebration for us in the midst of them.

Now some of us would prefer no troubles, no enemies, no hurricanes that disrupt our lives, but that's not the reality of the creation, and I would add that many of us are formed to become the persons God is calling us to become because of the testing and troubles that come our way. What I love about this promise from the psalm is that God promises to be with us and even provide plenty for us as we face them. Look carefully at your life in the times of trouble and see if God hasn't provided comfort, hope, even His largesse as you go through them. God will never leave us to face our perils alone and may even give gracious gifts to you and me as we go through them.

This Saturday is our annual, All-Parish Work Day, and as blessed as we are as a community with staff and funds to care for most of the day to day needs of our buildings and grounds, we could use your help cleaning up after the hurricane and touching up a few places. Please make plans to join us for an hour or for the day to keep St. David's a beautiful sign of God's presence in the world. And while the food being provided isn't quite a banquet by most standards, it's an opportunity for all of us to give back to God and to keep St. David's an inviting place for those in trouble who are in need of God's presence in their lives. See you Saturday and see you Sunday.

Grace and Peace,
WFA