Anglican Communion News Service

Reflections on a Broken World

"How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street." Lamentations 4:1

A Broken Church

It is sad to receive an engineer evaluation of a broken church building in the capital. We did not need a door to get in, we could use any of the two holes in the wall. Everything was destroyed, just the facade as if it were one street in a Hollywood set.

So much work and sacrifice gone in a week of rain and wind. The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 587BC and our holy stones lie scattered also in AD1998.

A Honduran Christmas tree in November

The videos scare you as you look at them on TV. You can see the trees full of trapped bodies or people that tied themselves to make sure they were not washed away. It will take days for those people to be removed from the trees as the waters go down. There is not time for that because the few helicopters makes it hard to rescue the people still living waiting for days in Honduras.

A family tells their story about climbing a tree when the waters came. It was a tall tree and they thought they were saved. But they were trapped unable to go anywhere, starving and thirsty. When the sun finally came out they realized that they were in a middle of a flooded land. Where there were no rivers now there was a sea. The mother cries as she tells the story of their children falling one after the other into the raging waters below. No food, diarreah from drinking the infected water below.

A broken world indeed that remind me the words of Lamentations again: "My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult; my heart is poured out in grief because the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city." Lamentations 2:11

An exalted Lay Pastor

I will not mention his name because I have to say that he is the worst student of the theological program of the diocese. He is indeed academically challenged and I am sure that the congregation he is in charge in the mountains of Santa Barbara don't get to read the correct lessons for the day. He has a hard time with the lectionary and for that matter with all the disciplines of his training to be ordained under Canon 9. But the Magnificat says that the Lord has exalted those of low degree, yes indeed!

My seminarian was the only pastor in town that stayed around unlike those of other denominations that spend their time putting us down. He went house to house caring for those in need, helping the elderly, comforting those afraid. When the mountains came rolling down blocking the village for over a week he was the only minister around because the others had fled. Everyone gathered in the local Episcopal Church Prayer Book and all regardless of their religious persuasion. I wonder what lesson he found this time in the lectionary, but who cares he was there as their pastor reflecting God's love that never abandon us.

Tomorrow I'll share with you a few more stories that are part of our experience in this broken but not defeated diocese.

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