Amy Welborn is a contributor - five devotions per issue - to the Living Faith daily devotional quarterly.
Before everything shut down last year, I was in New York City to see Hadestown, a musical loosely based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The play is framed, beginning and end, with Hermes singing: “It’s an old song, it’s a tragedy…but we’re gonna sing it again and again.”
Sitting with theatergoers, listening to an affirmation of the power of retelling a tale over and over, reminded me of the importance of liturgy, especially Holy Week. What we tell this week is more than a story.
December 29 (written a year ago, before the Covid pandemic)
Another calendar year is drawing to an end. When I look back, what do I see? What emotions do the events of this year’s journey around the sun bring? Perhaps the year has been dominated by sadness or discord, and we won’t be sorry at all to see it go.
Advent approaches, and as we draw near to that season, the Scripture readings are all about the last things: death, judgment and eternity. These can be frightening to contemplate, subjects we might rather avoid. But we can’t. Here they are, presented to us in God’s Word. And, if we are honest, here they are in the ebb and flow of our lives.
In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the Evil One.
- Ephesians 6:16
On our last day in South Florida, we headed out to Biscayne National Park, hoping to see the Miami skyline and, if we were lucky, some manatees. We were surprised by a different sight: loads of well-dressed people waiting in line and then gathering under a large tent. We had happened upon a citizenship ceremony. It was quite moving. What struck me was that these people had such intentional pursuit and acceptance of rights and responsibilities with which I'd been born, things that I had hardly ever thought about.
