Intersect

Scripture:  Ecclesiastes 4:4 And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. From the Katha Upanishad: Sharp like a razor's edge is the path, The sages say, difficult to traverse. Thought for the Day:  In the Hindu Katha Upanishad it is written, “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard.” The spiritual path is narrow and requires balance. Ecclesiastes reminds us that relentless pursuit of wealth (or any material gain, for that matter) is a shallow goal that ultimately has no spiritual payoff. In the verses just before this, we are admonished for being lazy. So it seems that in Ecclesiastes, as in the Upanishad, we are being instructed that the middle ground is often the wisest spiritual path. We have many opportunities to find the middle ground in this country (and throughout the world). Yet, we remain polarized in ideologie...

God of everlasting light, we praise your loving nature and embrace your invisible presence. Your energy touches our hearts. Your Holy Spirit shapes our souls. We come to you in humble service and infinite gratitude for all the ways, both known and unknown, you act in our lives and throughout the universe. We thank you for moments of stillness and calm— too few in a world of constant motion. [pause to sense God’s still, calming presence] God of us all, we know we have been called to serve and in the quiet of these moments, we confess our shortcomings. In the face of worldly unrest and tragedy, mayhem and murder, illness and death, we acknowledge we sometimes feel powerless and act with folly. We realize how difficult it is to be faithful servants. We wonder if we are, indeed, able to accomplish the task at hand: to create a world of love, to be loving beings. At such times, keep us mindful that it is not all up to us. The fate of the world does not lie on our frail human shoulders...

Our lives are an intricate dance between faith and culture. For as long as humans have been on the planet, our existence has been a sometimes not-so-subtle mixture of belief and bureaucracy; a complex ballet between our gods and our civilizations . As our cultures have become ever more secular, the ballet has become more difficult. How do we stay focused on the song of Christ, following the lead of God, when the accompanying culture gets more noisy and raucous all the time? How do we remember even to seek God when our culture is so distracting—often in exceptionally entertaining ways? Paul has to consider these same questions as he begins to preach about Jesus in a world that was every bit as noisy and raucous as ours. He has an entirely new way of looking at God. No Jew, nor Greek, nor Roman before him had ever considered that God is enfleshed in all human beings, or that there is a single God who loves humanity so much, it is willing to take human form. Of course, the Romans...

Holy God, who is never hidden from view, open our eyes, our hearts and our minds to your loving presence.   We know you are here today as you are, everyday. We also know we are too often blinded by the noise of society to notice you right here, right now, closer to us than our own breath. When I breathe, you breath. When I love, you love. When I hurt, you hurt. Because we are you in the flesh, everything we go through in this life you experience with us. But more than that, you give us a helping, healing hand. You wipe the tears of sorrow from our faces. You send us a joke when we’re feeling blue. You send us love and compassion when every voice is yelling at us in anger and fear.   We feel you. We hear you. We love you.   In humility we pray for our hurting world. We know you’re already working, everyday, through millions of us. So we pray not with the intention of having you grant our wishes, but solely to offer our living souls to you, that you might work through us an...