Gift of Being Thunderstruck

For those of us who live in Missouri, it feels like the weather has begged us to pay attention to God's voice thundering in the clouds all week long. Last night, many of us were kept awake by her flashes of lightning illuminating the skies of our ceilings.

How is God speaking to you this week? How has God been present to you in a new way, or in an old way that has been reframed. This week, my heart has been heavy within our global and our local communities. My heart is broken seeing the coffins of little girls whose school was bombed. My heart is broken for many of our matriarchs who have been in an out of the hospital this week: Ms. Jackie, Barb Payne, Rev. Betty, and Rosie.

And, when my heart has been heavy, I have seen the rain of the sky as God's tears. The thunder as God's anger. The lightning as a reminder of the surprising and luminous ways God shows up. So, this week, I give thanks for the thunder and thanks for the lightning. I give thanks for the budding of the tulips in my garden and for the geese honking their way back home.

After —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[These days] after
my country bombed
a girls’ school
across the world,
part of me does not
wish to meet the day.
But just after dawn,
I wake to the relentless
honking, honking
of geese returning
from far away
to make a home again
in our yard.
I want to rewrite
yesterday so every girl
who went to school
also came home
to her family,
so every mother and father
woke this morning knowing
their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror—
we killed them—
I don’t know how to rise.
But the great noise
of the geese returning,
that harsh and strangled sound,
pulls me into the world
to meet whatever the day brings.
A goose wanders past my window,
regal with her long black throat,
proof that life goes on.
Even when we can’t imagine how.
Even then.

Blessings,
Pastor Lauren