Song Spotlight

I love simple, sparse songs like this! We say and hear a lot of things in our liturgy, largely because we need God to transform our minds by his word. Still, our hearts need the chance to reflect and meditate on all that we experience in the liturgy. Songs like this offer us space to slow down and set our hearts to seek God’s face.

This song is simple, but it is not empty. It plants us in one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible (Ezek. 37:1-14). Ezekiel has a vision of a valley full of dry bones. God tells him to prophesy, and the bones will receive new life. Ezekiel does, and the bones shake and rattle, but nothing else happens. God speaks to him again: “prophesy to the breath.” Ezekiel does, and the bones rise together filled with new life. Ezekiel’s vision holds a promise for Israel. They had repeatedly forsaken God, and the result was exile and destruction. Israel is dead, but God will reach into their grave and raise them to new life. He will fill them with his own breath.

The Hebrew word for “breath” here is the same word for “Spirit.” When we sing “it’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise,” we aren’t just saying we’re glad to be alive. We pour out our praise because God has poured out his Spirit on us (Joel 2:28-29). We can sing because he has given us new life in Christ. Our sin, sickness, fear, and shame don’t get the last word. Even in darkness God’s Spirit cries out in us. Even when we are “bones” we can sing because God has given us His Spirit. We are not alone!

-Justin

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Song Spotlight

This is our first “Song Spotlight.” Click on the link below to listen along as you read and reflect!  

“Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song”

In the first verse, John Stocker’s hymn sings of a joy that flows out of God’s mercy. In the second verse, he tells us why. He’s seen just how dark his sin really is. If the light of God’s mercy doesn’t shine through it he cannot bear that despair. He can only carry on if God’s mercy carries him. 

In the third verse, still feeling that guilt, he struggles to believe that God could really bring new life to his hard heart. He doubts that God could really be near him, working in him. This is my favorite part of the hymn: God’s mercy breaks through that anxiety. He who is “greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:20) draws us closer to himself than we, in our fear and shame, would dare to go.

Sometimes that may seem too good to be true. In those moments, we need this fourth verse. We don’t find assurance in our feelings, good works, or airtight theology. We find it in God’s character. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is merciful, and he always keeps his promises.

We will sing this hymn a few more times over the next several weeks because this is the kind of song our hearts must learn to sing! Even when our prayers seem dead, or our hearts seem hard, or our sin seems too strong, we need to remember that God’s mercy is greater than our weakness. We can rejoice with a joy that God graciously gives.

-Justin

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Cultivating a Love of Hospitality

In Romans 12:13, Paul encourages the church at Rome to “contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”  Because of your generosity, Incarnation has money set aside to take care of the needs of the saints.  A new benevolence policy is in place to guide the church in using this money, and we are thankful that we have the means to take care of each other in times of need.  If you experience financial need (or if you know someone in town in financial need), please don’t hesitate to speak to the governance team (Connie Beekman, Elizabeth Ellwanger, Ken Fitchett, Elizabeth Hammon, and Ed Hardy) or staff (particularly Steven or Katherine) about the need.  We will guide you through the process.
 
In terms of hospitality, though, we need your help!  Early in the life of Incarnation, we enjoyed potlucks together every week, and later every other week, and then later once each month.  It was a wonderful time for people to get to know each other and learn to love each other.  We would continue to do this now, but because of coronavirus, we need to be more creative and less programmatic.  Basically, we need new ways of showing hospitality that arise organically in smaller settings.
 
The need to find new ways to show hospitality has arisen at the same time that the church is growing in size, which means that the need to “seek to show hospitality” is especially pressing.  We are faced with the fact that we cannot have the large group gatherings we would like to have, and there are new people to incorporate into the life of the church.
 
My encouragement for you all is to find safe ways to continue to grow in friendship and incorporate new people into the life of the church.  This starts with greeting each other on Sundays, but can extend to taking walks together, having outdoor meals, or getting together for coffee.  Be creative, don’t always get together with the same people, and if you stumble on a good solution, let others (including me!) know.  My prayer is that Incarnation is a church marked by the fact that no one gets overlooked, and all are taken care of by others.  One of our church’s strongest aspects is the way we have loved each other.  As we grow, we will have to keep remembering this, so that new people are always brought fully into the body!
 
In Christ,
Steven+

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