The scripture reading before the sermon is 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13.

Who?

This must be one of the most commonly asked questions in history. Anytime something needs doing, a job needs filling, a vacuum of power arises, or you need someone, the same question always comes up: Who? Who will do it? Who can we send? Who will run? Who will save us? Who will be my friend?

Who?

The people of Israel said “Who?…Who will be our King?” They didn’t have a king, but all the folks around them did, so they decided they just had to have one too. And the Lord answered their prayers; He told his prophet Samuel to anoint Saul to govern his people. Saul looked the part of a king. He was a tall man, a full head taller than everyone else. By the time of our story today, he was a war hero as well. He seemed to be everything the people thought a king should be. (Based on height alone, he could have been a university president, who as a group are far taller than the general population.)  But he was as it turns out, disobedient. And disobedience in Israel’s history seems to be God’s biggest pet peeve. So, the scripture tells us, “…the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.”

Now, let’s just take a brief aside here to recognize the danger of the phrase, “the Lord regretted…”. This only happens twice in our scripture. The only other instance is prior to the great flood of Noah when God decides to destroy most of humanity and try creation again. But we have to ask, does saying that God can regret mean the Lord is fallible?
We would like to offer a firm, No.
It means we are. God intended humanity to be good and holy, but they chose to turn against God. God knew what Saul was capable of as a leader, but Saul let Him down.

And now we find ourselves asking: Who? If not Saul, then who?

The Lord sent the prophet Samuel (whom we met two weeks ago) to Bethlehem, to anoint a new king. A small village, certainly not the place one would expect to find a king. He couldn’t even come in the open; after all, he used to be the ruler of the people of Israel. He came to make a sacrifice, as a subterfuge. He didn’t even know who to select, but he knew it was one of the eight sons of Jesse, who seemingly had many kingly virtues. But often God does not work the way we think he will. He doesn’t choose the obvious. He doesn’t choose those we expect.

These four young people on the screen share something in common, other than their age. I wonder if we can guess what it is? What do you think?

{actually take answers} They are all United Methodist Clergy.

Rev. Justin Hancock is also a Deacon from the North Texas Annual Conference. Justin lives with Cerebral Palsy, but his ministry is not restricted to disability advocacy. Justin lives in Dallas in a Missional Wisdom Foundation New Monastic Community. That’s a lot of words to say; it means he lives in a house with his wife and several other young Christians to try and model the earliest Christian communities. They practice their faith together through hospitality, shared meals, a pattern of worship and prayer, and acts of justice in their neighborhood. Justin previously served as the director of the Texas Tech Wesley Foundation, currently works with African refugees in Dallas, and is one heck of a preacher.

These faces are the rising leaders of our church. While they may not look like your typical Methodist circuit riders, they are each filled with a passion for Christ’s life giving love, gifted with skills for leadership, and have been called out, examined, set apart, and anointed to guide the ministry of the church.

But how would you genuinely feel if one of these young people had just been announced as the new pastor of this congregation? Would you trust them to lead our spiritual life together? What assumptions would get in the way?

David was not the right choice in Samuel’s eyes. Despite his many faithful years of service as God’s priest, Samuel assumed God would want the tallest, oldest, and most handsome of Jesse’s sons be serve as Israel’s new king. But no, God is not interested in what is on the outside, how the world sees the next king. God is sick of unfaithfulness. The Lord chooses instead the son with the most faithful heart. And in so doing, God shows us that our character, what is on the inside, is of much greater importance to God than how the world sees us.

Perhaps a more important question about our four clergy persons; If you had been introduced to any of these young people in a setting outside of church, would you have assumed them to be a Christian? Would you have sought to be their friend? Would you feel drawn to ask them their stories with an open heart, ready to receive the fullness of their character, experiences, brokenness, and gifts?

One of the largest challenges to peace, justice, and the flourishing of God’s kingdom is our reluctance to lay aside our assumptions. We categorize to make sense of the world, but when we do so we see with human eyes. Rarely do we entertain the spiritual and emotional effort to set aside our worldly lenses, and see one another through God’s eyes.  When Samuel selects Jesse’s oldest son first, the story says, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

For our modern era we might read that, “Do not look upon his appearance, or race, their gender, or sexuality, her weight, tattoos and piercings, or his differently abled body. For the lord does not see as mortals see. The Lord looks on the heart.”

So who might we be missing in our churches, because we fail to see one another’s hearts? Who may be already among us that has potential, and maybe even desire for leadership in ministry, but whom we have assumed was not interest, or not capable. Who is not at the table as we plan for the future of our ministry together? Who are our neighbors, beyond what we see as we drive to and from the church? Who is God calling? Who has God anointed?

[Ray: I am preaching today because our clergy are in Aurora, participating in the pride parade.] (Naperville delivery only. Blair may have delivered a variant of this line.) The first pride parade was held in 1970, one year after the Stonewall Riots. The goal of the march, and the gay liberation movement it stemmed from, was to flip the stigma of homosexuality and non-binary gender expressions, into a public celebration of diversity. Due to societal and legal pressures, LGBTQ persons often led double lives to participate in “everyday” life. But how could society come to accept LGBTQ people if they were hidden? Pride events developed to allow people to show their true selves. I would say to share with honesty and authenticity their God-given belovedness. Nearly 50 years later, the LGBTQIA+ community is still fighting stigma. And “good Christian people” are mostly to blame for perpetuating their rejection.

Pride is still necessary because the church fails to see LGBTQIA+ through the eyes of God. The church fails to see their hearts, distracted by the apparent gender of the person they are holding hands with. Our church fails to acknowledge God’s ability to “regret” and change the course of God’s own plan to select new leaders for a new era. Leaders that may not look like, act like, sound like, love like, we think they ought to.

Pride, then, is a holy act of resistance. It dares the world to drop assumptions and see the fullness of individuals as they were made by God to be. It dares us to push back against the stigma placed upon each of us, whatever that shame may be, and share our own authentic selves with our beloved community. Pride dares each one of us to be the children of God together, without reservation, seeing one another’s hearts as God does.

[Blair: I recognize our congregation is not the congregation I grew up in. We are not a reconciling congregation. We are not openly affirming and we together in this sanctuary are of mixed mind about LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the church, and the contextual reading of scriptures that reference human sexuality. But I want us all to know this as we consider our identity as a congregation and how we will move forward into this next chapter of our history; there are already Gay men, Lesbian women, Transgender people, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and even more diversity of sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions of love, in our midst. And furthermore, they have always been here. LGBTQIA+ identities are not new inventions. We may have more complex names and definitions, but Queer people have been amongst you throughout the history of this church. 10% of the population at any time is expected to be outside the heteronormative identity. These people are, and have always been in our midst. I choose to believe we have already seen them with the eyes of God; accepting them and loving them, and celebrating their gifts. But as long as we remain ambiguous about our stance on LGBTQIA+ inclusion, there will be people who will never risk the walk into our sanctuary for fear of rejection and being forced back into the closet. As our denomination considers our options of unity or disunity in 2019, the Bishops have promised congregations will not be forced to take a vote on whether they will be welcoming of LGBTQIA+ members and clergy. But there is no way we get to the other side of February 2019 and don’t at least have to talk openly about where we will stand. The sooner we begin to have these conversations among ourselves about who we will accept in our pews, on our altar, and in our pulpit, the better off we will be as our denomination faces this massive shift.] (Ontario delivery only)

[Blair: More than anything,] I pray our church and our communities would embrace God’s challenge to see with divine eyes every person in our midst. Because if we continue to keep our spiritual vision shut, we run the danger of missing who God has already called in our midst. Who God may be gathering together to enrich our faith community. Who God may have already anointed to lead us into the next chapter of our life as the Body of Christ. And until we are willing to see, find, love, every single who, the Body of Christ will not be complete.

Let us pray.

Promises. Everybody makes promises. We make promises to ourselves, often on New Years Day: “This year, I’m gonna lose 40 pounds.” “This year, I’m gonna not watch so much TV.” And some people get a little ridiculous: “I will not bore my boss by with the same excuse for taking days off. I will think of some more excuses.” or “I will find out why the correspondence course on “Mail Fraud” that I purchased never showed up.” Comedian Pete Holmes has the best formula for resolutions: “Forgot to make resolutions? Just write out everything you did last night and at the beginning add the word ‘stop.’” Simple, easy promises that all too often people do not take very seriously.

Fathers make promises. The promise of a parent is far more serious than a resolution. After church today, John and Lynn and I are heading up to the Warrenville Community Center to help present “Mary Poppins: The Broadway Musical.” Most folks probably think this show is about Mary Poppins, but actually it’s not. It’s about George Banks, the father of the family living at 17 Cherry Tree Lane. It’s about unfulfilled and even unexpressed promises of a father to his family, and Mary Poppins freeing George to be a full father to his children. Every Dad makes promises, and today on Father’s Day we thank our fathers for following through on those promises: the promise of love, a home, a family, and a launchpad to allow us to leave that home and family to make it in the world.

God our father also makes promises, and our Epistle today explains the fulfillment of promise: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” What is the promise? That the Messiah, God’s own Son, would free us from adherence to the law as a means of salvation. This is God’s launchpad for us, allowing us to leave home and make it in the world.

Heirs according to the promise. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary tells us that an heir is someone who “one who receives or is entitled to receive some endowment or quality from a parent or predecessor.” We are the heirs because God is our Father. Presbyterian theologian R.C. Sproul tells us that until Jesus used the term, God was never referred to as “Father” in Judaism. Dr. Sproul tells us that “A few years ago, a German scholar was doing research in New Testament literature and discovered that in the entire history of Judaism—in all existing books of the Old Testament and all existing books of extrabiblical Jewish writings dating from the beginning of Judaism until the tenth century A.D. in Italy—there is not a single reference of a Jewish person addressing God directly in the first person as Father.” But Jesus changed all this. He not only addressed God as Father, but told his followers that we should do this as well. God acknowledged that his creation of humanity made him our Father, co-equal with his Son as his children, and as heirs to his promise.

God’s covenant originally was with his chosen people, the people of Israel, but in St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia, he makes to very clear that all are his children, for “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female…” We recognize this at Wesley with our welcoming statement: “God, as known to us in Jesus Christ, welcomes all. So do we. All people of any race, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, economic status, or life situation are welcome here.” Because God is our Father, we are heirs, and just like a loving father, He loves all of us. Love is a remarkable commodity, because as every parent knows, it is one of the only things you can’t run out of. Everything else we need to make a household run—milk and butter and gas for the car, and the money to pay for it all—is finite, but love is limitless. There is never a reason to parcel or ration love.

Today in our society there is a lot of hate. As hate is the reverse side of love, it also seems to be without capacity or limits as well. Hate is manifestly evident in treating people that God has made as somehow less than others, in telling them, for example, that even thought God created them as gay that “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” It is the Law that tells us this, but the Epistle lesson tells us that “…the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” All means all. Everyone. No exceptions.

Hate results in terrible consequences, like the deaths in Orlando last week. Hate saps us, it tires us, it drags us down. And while I cannot imagine a single positive outcome from hate, an awful lot of people sure seem to spend a lot of time and energy on hate. Some folks hate all liberals because they want to come into their homes and take their AR-15 assault rifles. Some folks hate the National Rifle Association, because they want terrorists to be able to buy AR-15 assault rifles. Some folks hate anyone different than themselves: not their race, not their religion, not their gender, not their gender preference, not their nationality. And other people just hate bigots. Demagogues play off of our hate, and can even lead people blinded by their hate to make choices that they otherwise would never make.

As people of God, as heirs to the promise, as brothers and sisters who have been told that we all are equal, neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, there is no room for hate. And the only correct answer, the only real antidote to hate…is love. We need to love as a parent. As a father—and I know pretty much every father shares this experience—there are days where you may not like your child very much. But you still love them. Let’s face it, all of us are pretty unlovable sometimes, and God loves us anyway. SO I know it’s a stretch, but as His heirs, God expects us to love with the same disregard for the likeability of those who are subjects of our love. We can’t do this on our own—we have to draw on God’s infinite store of love to strengthen us and allow us to love as He would have us. The only cure for hate is love.

In the words of the popular hymn, “With God as our Father, brothers all are we. Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony.” So let us all walk with each other as brothers and sisters, together as heirs to the promise, and go forth as our Father would have us, to love. Amen.

Everybody has heard of “Pharisees” and “Sadducees,” and most Christians have a vague awareness that they were some sort of division within Judaism at the time of Jesus. These two groups represented philosophical, theological, liturgical, and cultural differences in Judaism during an era in Jewish history commonly referred to as the Second Temple period. This dates from the return of the nation of Israel from the Babylonian captivity when they re-built the temple, until the Romans destroyed the Temple in about 70 AD. So lets get some context here: who were these people?

The Sadducees were the priestly class, and most of the aristocracy and the wealthy among the Jews were members of this group. They placed strong emphasis on formal worship at the temple, in the role of the priests in offerings and atonement, and in strict and formal adherence to the Torah. Because the Babylonians did not allow a restoration of the royalty of Judah when the Jews returned from their captivity, this element stepped up to fill the power void, so temporal power and wealth also came to the Sadducees. Many of common folk of Judah saw the rebuilding of the temple as something foisted on them by foreigners, the Babylonians, and consequently they didn’t quite trust the Sadducees.

The Pharisees represent a different strain of Judaism, one that grew out of their exile of the nation in Babylon. Since there was no temple there, the common people among the Jews gathered to worship in assemblies—in Hebrew called a beit knesset, but you’re probably more familiar with the Greek term: a synagogue. They collected and began to write down the oral interpretations of the Torah, a document which in time became known as the Talmud. In many senses the Pharisees were very egalitarian, as they valued learning of the Torah and the Talmud most of all, and elevated their most learned men to the position of teachers, with a title of Rabbi. Despite their exile “only” lasting seventy years, for most Jews it produced profound changes in how their faith was expressed.

Sometimes the most fun in learning a little history is being able to see how it has shaped the world we live in today, and learning a bit about the Pharisees and the Sadducees is no different. Did you ever wonder why there’s been no truly strong move in the reborn Israel of the modern day to rebuild the temple? (I mean, of course, apart from the fact that the second holiest shrine of Islam happens to occupy the site…) And did you ever ponder why, despite the return of Judaism to Jerusalem, there are no Jewish priests—particularly in light of the important role they played in the stories of ancient Israel and Judah, and even in the life of Jesus? When the Romans destroyed the temple and once again exiled the Jews from their homeland, with no temple there was nowhere for the priests to perform their priestly duties. Consequently the Sadducees disappeared as a tradition in the Jewish faith, and they’re just not around to press for a restoration of the priesthood. But the rabbinical tradition of the Pharisees, created in exile, was built to order to survive in exile. So those we know as Pharisees in the stories of Jesus became what is now modern Judaism.

Our story today opens with Jesus responding to a group of Pharisees. They had heard that Jesus had responded to a group of Sadducees who had come to him with a question about resurrection—since the Sadducees didn’t believe in physical resurrection—and the Jesus had answered their question in a manner very different from what any of them had expected. So a Pharisee identified to us in the text as a lawyer asked Jesus a very rabbinical question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” This is the type of question rabbis routinely ask of each other and their students in an honest attempt to explore the depths of the law, but the intent here was to pose the question in such a way as to ensure that any answer he might give could be interpreted as being wrong. (Sounds like a classic lawyer kind of trick to me; I’ll bet this one was a litigator.) But Jesus doesn’t respond with one of the Ten Commandments. The version of the Ten Commandments I grew up with, from the King James version of the Bible, are a veritable litany of “Thou Shalt Nots.” But instead of picking any of those, Jesus reaches into other two other parts of the law to sum up the intent of all of those commandments in a far more positive manner.

Jesus starts off with a slight rewording of a verse—Deuteronomy 6:5—that was so familiar to his listeners that it is part of a scripture passage that even has a name: Jews call this verse the Shema from the first word of the phrase “sh’ma Yisrael.” The entire Shema is Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹ and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” This passage is often the first verses a Jewish child learns; today it is said twice daily in Jewish prayers, and probably was then as well. The most pious Jews in the time of Jesus wore small boxes on their foreheads and their arms, known as phylacteries, containing these verses as an physical expression of verse 8 “Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.” So this was mighty familiar territory.

But Jesus changes one word of this oh so familiar phrase: he says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Might becomes mind, expressing that this is something you have thought about, and that you have not only committed your heart and soul to, but your reason and intellect as well. I wonder if John Wesley may have considered this when  he propounded the four sources as a basis of theological and doctrinal development that we now know as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: scripture, tradition, experience and reason?

Jesus then followed this verse with part of another verse from the Law: Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

He sums the two passages up by concluding, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  His second verse and his conclusion are very similar to a quote from Rabbi Hillel, who said when asked to by a Gentile to explain the Torah to him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” This sometimes even leads to accusations that Jesus plagiarized Hillel.

But Hillel only restates the Golden Rule; even in their day it had been around for long time. Jesus, on the other hand, attempted to show through the primacy of love, that instead of worrying about doing things wrong—the “Thou Shalt Nots…”—that by living our life in love, love for our God, for our neighbor, and for ourselves, we could not but help but to live out the law. Thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, we no longer have to count on adherence to the law for our salvation, but instead are called to live our lives as He would have us as a response to the grace we have been granted. And we see that Jesus also made living in the light of His grace far simpler than rote observance of ten lines written on stone tablets: enabled by our faith in Him, all we have to do is love.

At the risk of being facile, I think an easy summary of what Jesus said we should do can come from the words of Paul. No, not Saint Paul; but rather Paul McCartney:

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

May you go and love: love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself. Illuminated by the grace of your Savior and empowered by your faith, love is all you need. Amen.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Spaffords and their four daughters booked passage on the steamship Ville de Havre sailing from New York. Spafford was delayed in Chicago by business, but told his wife and daughters to go ahead and planned to join them later. For some reason that he was unable to explain, at the last moment he changed their stateroom from amidships to near the bow of the vessel. Anna and the girls sailed, and halfway to Europe an English sailing ship collided with their ship amidships. Had they been in their original stateroom, all would have been killed. As it was, Anna and the four little girls were cast into the inky black sea. She frantically tried to save them but although she briefly grasped the hem of the nightgown of one of them they all slipped away. Anna was found floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage and was rescued. The ship had sunk in minutes and of the hundreds aboard, only forty-seven were rescued.

Back in Chicago, Spafford received a heart-rending telegram of only two words: “Saved Alone”. He immediately sailed for Europe. As he was enroute, the captain of the ship he was sailing on called him to the bridge. Pointing to the chart, the captain told him that they were just passing the spot where the Ville de Havre had gone down. As Horatio walked the deck in his sorrow, his faith was all that sustained him. It nearly moves me to tears each time I contemplate the depth of his loss. But he was overtaken by a feeling of peacefulness as he realized that he would see his daughters again in heaven. As he watched the waves rolling on the ocean he recalled the words of Isaiah 66:12, “For thus says the Lord, I will extend peace to her like a river…” and penned the words that have come down to us as one of our most enduring hymns:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows, like sea-billows, roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

Chorus
It is well, it is well with my soul!
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul!

My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part, but the whole,
Is nailed to His Cross, and I bear it no more;
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

How many of us could deal with our grief as Spafford did? He clearly expressed the confidence of his salvation, and the peace and solace that this assurance gave him. He had the ability to say that whatever his lot, it was well with his soul. While I know that the Lord can offer us such an assurance, I also know that despite my faith, I don’t know that I would be able to have such peace in my heart in the face of such tragedy.

Sure, I know I should. But faith is a difficult thing, it’s a gut-level matter for each of us between you and God. In our Old Testament lesson today, Moses has the opportunity to talk directly with God. God puts him in the cleft of the rock and covers Moses with His hand as He passes by, but Moses gets to see the Lord’s back. We are asked to believe without such proof, a belief that is only possible because of a measure of grace that God grants each of us, for we are called to believe without hearing His voice or seeing His passage. Fortunately the core of our faith, the strength, the very essence, is the same for each of us as that which Horatio Spafford felt. This power to believe is drawn directly from God, if only we will surrender to His will in our lives and allow His hand to touch us and fill us with the same faith that calmed the raging seas of sorrow in Spafford’s heart. He is there to sustain us when it seems like the pain is too much to bear. His love for us is such that we are called the Children of God; He cares for us just as a parent cares for a child. You always want to shield your children from pain and sorrow, but when that’s not possible you want to be there to comfort them and “restore their soul”.

God grants this faith to each of us, if only we will take it and use it. Horatio Spafford did. There’s much, much more to his story. As Saint Paul said of the Thessalonians in our New Testament lesson today, “And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers…” After their return to Chicago and the birth of two more daughters, the events of the preceding years led Anna and Horatio to reexamine the course of their lives. They decided to move their family to Jerusalem to get closer to Jesus, to be—as the Thessalonians were—imitators of Jesus and the Apostles. So along with several other families who accompanied them from Chicago, they moved into a house in the Old Quarter, between Herod’s Gate and the Damascus Gate, and dedicated themselves to a life of helping the poor of Jerusalem. This settlement became known as “the American Colony” and grew over the years. Several excellent books chronicle the growth and faith of the Colony, including “Our Jerusalem” by their daughter Bertha, and the Nobel Prize-winning historical novel “Jerusalem” by Swedish author Selma Lagerlof, which chronicled the lives of a group of her countrymen that joined the Spaffords and the American Colony to do the Lord’s work. Even today the original house in the Old Quarter of Jerusalem is the Spafford Children’s Center, still caring for the poor of Jerusalem, and well into the 20th century was run by Anna Lind, a grandaughter of Horatio and Anna Spafford. The Center still reaches out to people of all faiths, has four trustees that are great-grandchildren of the Spaffords, and has a staff that includes Christians, Muslims, and Jews—all working together to extend to Lord’s compassion to the poor.

Horatio Spafford’s faith moved him not only to praise but to action. Ours should to. Our actions may be as simple as a child’s quarter in the offering plate, or, just as the Spafford’s efforts invited others to join them in the Lord’s work, we can invite the new neighbor down the street to come join us in worship. (Did you know that the number one reason people try a new church is because someone invited them?) Just as the American Colony in Jerusalem helped the poor of that city, the United Methodist Church as a body does a great deal to help both those who are poor in earthly goods and those who are poor in spirit we all can help. The measure of faith that God grants to each of us not only sustains us in our times of trial but moves us to action to do the work of His kingdom on earth. It is my prayer today that each of us can feel the faith that God grants to us in full measure, the faith that truly can allows us to say “it is well with my soul”, the faith that allows us to echo the words of Horatio Spafford:

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul!

Let’s join together in singing Hymn 377, “It is Well With My Soul”. As you sing it, contemplate the faith God granted the man who could view his sorrow and loss and still say “it is well with my soul”, and remember that God grants that same faith to each of us if only we will allow it to fill our lives. Amen.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/