Through the rest of this week we’ll wonder, with Job, where is God? Where is God in the midst of enormous challenges facing his creation and his ‘children’ throughout creation—even those we consider our ‘enemies’? And where is God in the challenges we face?
Sometimes the chimes sound far-off, sometimes near. What do you hear?
God is too good to believe in
God is not too hard to believe in. God is too good to believe in, we being such strangers to such goodness. The love of God is to me absolutely overwhelming. It’s clear to me, two things: that almost every square inch of the Earth’s surface is soaked with the tears and blood of the innocent, and it’s not God’s doing. It’s our doing. That’s human malpractice. Don’t chalk it up to God. Every time people say, when they see the innocent suffering, every time they lift their eyes to heaven and say, “God, how could you let this happen?” it’s well to remember that exactly at that moment God is asking exactly the same question of us: “How could you let this happen?” So you have to take responsibility. —William Sloane Coffin in an interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly on August 27, 2004.
October 15 – International Rural Women’s Day
“Where is God? How could God let this happen?” High food prices affect us all. While we may complain about this, we know that in rural locations throughout our nation and the world the affect of high food prices can be devastating.
“Prices of food have really gone up and this has made my children and I not to eat as we used to. We used to eat four times a day but now we can only eat two times under hard struggle.” — Salome Nche, mother of eight, Cameroon excerpt from the Huairou Commission report “Grassroots Women’s Perspectives on Food Insecurity in Africa, Asia and Latin America,” 2009
Go to more information about the need and the beginning responses to meet the need.
One way Episcopalians “take responsibility” is through the work of Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). Financial contributions from members and non-members fund work ‘on-the-ground’ in rural communities. Here is one example:
[ERD] Alleviating Hunger and Improving the Food Supply [in both Sudan and South Sudan in partnership with The Episcopal Church of Sudan]
- approximately 24 agriculture resource agents will be trained over the next three years (one for each diocese)
- following a three-month training course, each resource agent will establish a model garden to demonstrate agricultural techniques
- the agent will train communities in sustainable land management, focusing on household gardens which can provide families with nutritious food and needed income
- For more information
A prayer of remembering before a meal
“O God when I have food, help me to remember the hungry.
When I have work, help me to remember the jobless.
When I have a comfortable home, help me to remember
those who suffer from the cold or from the heat.
When I am without pain, help me to remember those who suffer.
In all this remembering, help me to destroy my own complacency
and bestir my compassion.
Make me concerned enough to help by word, deed and prayer,
those who cry out for what I so often take for granted.”
Contained in a Facebook posting by fr. James martin on 24 July 2012. He heard this prayer. Offered as a blessing before lunch in a 2012 meeting in Massachusetts of roman catholic school superintendents and principals
Photo: Women buying fruit in a downtown market in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. FAO is implementing its Initiative on Soaring Food Prices (ISFP) in the country to rapidly boost food production in order to increase food availability and accessibility and to alleviate the effects of soaring food prices on poor and vulnerable groups. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti Additional information about the International Day of Rural Women
Hear what the Spirit is saying 