Bread for the journey...

This month I learned that a friend and fellow seminary student is facing her final weeks on this earth. The cancer that was being kept at bay for the last couple of years is no longer responding to treatment. I have shed many tears for my friend, her husband, her two young adult daughters, and her church. I got to know Jane in our spiritual guidance and pastoral counselling practicums and she is one of the most genuine, nurturing caregivers that I know. Her seemingly untimely illness cannot be fathomed outside of Mystery.

A year and a half ago Jane asked me to lead worship during the chapel service in which she was invited to share her story of living with cancer. At that time we were all hopeful that complete healing was possible, though we knew very well that with cancer one never knows. Today's medical system would like us to think that there are guarantees, but there are really more unknowns than we'd often like to admit. Jane knew that and candidly shared her fears, doubts and questions even while holding on to hope.

In the last few weeks as I've been sending thoughts and prayers Jane's way two of the songs that Jane chose for that chapel service have been surfacing in me:

Brethren, we have met to worship
and adore the Lord our God.
Will you pray with all your power
while we try to preach the word?
All is vain unless the Spirit
of the holy One comes down.
Brethren, pray, and holy manna
will be showered all around.

Sisters, will you come and help us?
Moses' sisters aided him.
Will you help the trembling mourners
who are struggling hard with sin?
Tell them all about the Savior.
Tell them that he will be found.
Sisters, pray, and holy manna
will be showered all around.

Is there here a trembling jailer,
seeking grace and filled with fears?
Is there here a weeping Mary
pouring forth a flood of tears?
Brethren, join you cries to help them,
sisters, let your prayers abound!
Pray, oh, pray, and holy manna
will be showered all around.

Let us love our God supremely,
let us love each other too.
Let us love and pray for sinners
till our God makes all things new.
Christ will call us home to heaven,
at his table we'll sit down.
Christ will gird himself and serve us
with sweet manna all around.
-----
We will walk with God, my brothers,
we will walk with God.
We will walk with God, my sisters,
we will walk with God.
We will go rejoicing
till the kingdom has come.
We will go rejoicing
till the kingdom has come.

As I have pondered the words of these songs I've felt the rub of the words "adore" and "rejoice", some of the last things we feel like doing in the shadow of death. But then it dawned on me that these are really songs for the journey, to sustain us even when praising God is the last thing we feel like doing. These are prayers and commitments that have been growing in us for just such a time as this...for this time when more often than not we are at a loss for words. That's not to say that doubt and confusion and fear and anger are wrong, only that they may be held as part of a larger whole.

Today I learned that the AMBS president and others will be going to Jane's home in Ohio next week to confer her M.Div. since she is not likely to live to the commencement ceremony at the end of May. What a way to mark the life of this extraordinary minister...