Weekly Devotion

June 22 2020

Senatobia District Devotion – Week of June 22, 2020

Job 38.39-39.12; 1 Corinthians 12.1-3

Change is hard. Change is often met by grief and fear. Change is inevitable. We are in a season
of change. In the Church Universal, in the United Methodist Church, in the world around us, and
I would venture to say, in your own lives, change is happening. This devotion was supposed to
be for the week following our Mississippi Annual Conference gathering. I was looking forward to
meditating on some celebratory text, and recalling all of the good things that happened when
were together. But things changed. COVID happened. We could not safely gather at our
regularly appointed time. Many of you are still wrestling with decisions about in-person worship,
and precautions, and how to best navigate community ministry in the midst of a global crisis.

Not only has a viral infection called COVID-19 created change, but the recent killings of Amaud
Arbery, Brionna Taylor, and George Floyd are bringing about a heightened level of change in
relationships between People of Color and the white collective community. All of us are
wrestling with the question, “What are supposed to do?” Many of you are bravely traveling
alongside Black and Brown sisters and brothers by marching or preaching about the common
image that we find in God’s creative work of humanity. Some of you are trying to do good
ministry work, and finding difficult opposition from the very people whom you have been hymn-
singing and potlucking with for years.

Like Job, you may be clinching your fists skyward, screaming at the top of your lungs to God,
“WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING ABOUT ALL OF THIS CHANGE?!” The screaming,
the crying, the lamenting toward God – it is okay – you can do it. In fact, screaming, crying, and
lamenting to God are biblical practices. And God can handle whatever it is that you need to
unload. But be mindful that if we ask God for a response to our questions, God might turn and
respond with a question of God’s own asking: “Who are you that questions me? Do you know
who I Am?” Job was quickly reminded that God is God, and he was not. Paul picks up this
reminder in his letter to the Corinthian Christians when he reminds them that there is nothing
that they can do apart from the power of Holy Spirit.

It is Holy Spirit who empowers us to even say the name Jesus. You cannot put your sermons
together without Holy Spirit’s power. You cannot put your children and youth calendars together
without Holy Spirit’s power. You cannot run a ZOOM meeting without Holy Spirit’s power (and I
have been on ZOOM meetings with many of you, wonder where Holy Spirit was!). Change is not
possible without Holy Spirit’s power!

We are only a few days out from Pentecost when Holy Spirit descended on a group of people
who were trying to navigate change. They were grieving. They were afraid. Yet, it was in the
midst of them that Holy Spirit worked and moved so that others might come to know and
celebrate God’s love made known in Jesus the Christ. May you, as you navigate these rough
waters of change, be filled with Holy Spirit so that you might remember and embody the
changing, transforming love of God.