Lent Photo Challenge - Album

 

The photo challenge is now complete, we hope you enjoyed the thoughts and meditations throughout Lent. 

All the photos are in a Google album for you to look through. 
Just follow this link

Lent Photo Album

Day 47 – Found

 

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”  Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20: 11-18)

Something happened in the night. Long before the first light of day, before anyone was around to witness it, before any human hand or faith could claim any involvement or revelation – God acted in the dark. Mary finds it first. The tomb is empty, the body gone.  She is grief-stricken and bewildered. So it is that the first experience of resurrection is of loss and emptiness – but there is no other way. We will not come to it by any familiar ways of human understanding. Not for the first time we encounter non-sense. Faith comes to existence where it is needed most – in the very heart of our incomprehension and helplessness. The risen Jesus is not to be recognised by human choice or will. It is for him to reveal himself and release us into freedom. Faith is a gift. He is present even without our recognition. He has found us and he waits for us.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 

Prayer

You, Lord, are risen! You are risen indeed! And with your rising comes our reawakening, our release, our freedom for all time. Thank you, Lord, for this journey; for the moments of revelation, of sharing, of understanding and of joyful incomprehension at the wonder of your love. May your people face the day ahead as Easter people, sharing the hope of new life and possibility with all we meet.

Day 46 – Release

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment. (Luke 23: 55-56)

 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all… in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey. (1Peter 3: 18-20)

 What are we to do with this day? We do the same as the first disciples. We do nothing. That is the whole point. A body is lying dead in a tomb. It is the end. There is nothing we can do here. But this is Jesus in the tomb. God cannot die so whose body do you see there? Whose death is he dying?  To seek Jesus on this day, we must contemplate our own end – see our own body lying there beyond breath, lifeless. That is where we meet him. Medieval imagination loved to picture Jesus descending to the world of the dead. He arrives at the gates of the underworld. Satan, whose kingdom this is, comes out to receive what he assumes to be the routine delivery of another human body due to him, for the penalty for sin is death. But he finds, to his utter horror, that he has received the sinless Lord of Glory into his domain. At a stroke, his kingdom is laid waste, evil is vanquished and death itself is defeated.

 Prayer

Lord Jesus, take me by the hand. Take me with you. Release me and raise me up with you.

Day 45 – Torn

Mischievious Meabh (JH)

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink… Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last… Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Many women were also there, looking on from a distance. (Matthew 27: 45-48, 50, 54-55).

 

That cry of Jesus is ours. He is crying the cry of the world. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” the old spiritual asks. Yes, we were – because Jesus was there, in our humanity, in our sin, in the terrible dislocation of it all. God is calling to God from the farthest reaches of a God-lost world. To make that cry takes him to his very last breath. That cry means there is nowhere where God is not. Now, like the women, we must stand and watch and wait. It is out of our hands. It is out of the hands of Jesus, too. It is abandoned into the hands of God.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 For Reflection

Imagine yourself standing at the foot of the cross of Jesus. Is there anything you want to say or ask?

 Remember in Prayer

Those separated from loved ones this past year, through illness, death or distance; those who feel distant from God at this time; those who cry out for comfort because of loneliness, pain, anxiety.

Day 44 – Servant

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God,  got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet… He came to Simon Peter who said to him…“You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”… After he had washed their feet…he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?... if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet…. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.  If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. (John 13: 1-6, 8-9, 12, 14, 16-17)

 

“Do you know what I have done for you?” If you take off the outer covering, whatever has been concealed is now revealed: the secret is laid bare. Divine love is humble. It is a way of life in which all is laid down for the love and service of the other. There is no competition, no pecking order or hierarchy. Jesus is giving us a glimpse of heaven. If we want to see Jesus we must look down, not up. He is there kneeling at our feet, washing them. This is a washing we cannot do for ourselves. We must surrender to being ‘done to’; grace must embarrass us. All is prepared for us. This is the only love on offer and it is always found beneath our dignity; beneath our feet, unashamed in the mess and dirt. This is to be our way of life too. It is the way of all blessing.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 For Reflection

Imagine Jesus asking you: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” What is your response?

 Remember in Prayer

Those who serve others in our community – in hospitals, clinics, shops and other service industries which have put others first during the pandemic.

Day 43 – Cross

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? (Mark 8: 31-36)

 (Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

This is an uncompromising image of faith. What life-plans, hopes and ambitions make any sense in this moment? To take up our cross is to surrender all attempts to use life, religion and God for our own ends and needs – but the instinct to make such attempts runs very deep. It may look admirably devout and spiritual, but our peril is that we are engaging in activities that are powerless to save. We cannot save ourselves. To take up our cross is to set our mind on ‘divine things’, says Jesus. This all hinges on God and what he is about. All our hope is found here, for the cross is for ever the sign of a God who loves, saves, delivers and raises life out of the darkness of what is dead and lost. Those who lose their life here will find it.

 

For Reflection

What does ‘taking up your cross’ mean for you?

 

Prayer

Nothing in my hand I bring.

Simply to your cross I cling.

Rock of Ages – Augustus Toplady 1725

 

Day 42 – Outsider

Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death,  but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward  and said, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days.’” The high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?” But Jesus was silent. Then the high priest said to him, “I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?” They answered, “He deserves death.” (Matthew 26: 59-66)

 

The death of Jesus was the work of devout, God-focused people. When the stakes are high, and deep securities are threatened, religious people may not fight fairer than anyone else. There is a dark side to believing as to everything else – perhaps more so since the ‘faithful’ presume to be acting with divine sanction. A faith with a cross at its centre is well aware that it is part of this world’s deadly capacity for self-delusion and evil. So how did this story become the ‘good news’? Here it is: the cross of Jesus reveals God’s saving love for the world. What happens when a religious sacrificial system based on the management of sin, guilt and debt, receives a perfect victim who makes a free gift of their life for what they do not owe? The whole system collapses. It is rendered redundant, no longer the basis of our acceptance or forgiveness.  If divine love meets us in the gift of Jesus on the cross, there is nowhere that is outside God’s blessing and embrace.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

Prayer

Lord upon the cross, nowhere is outside your love. Help me to live in this world in the light of that truth.

Day 41 – Wasteful

Wasteful - Banjul 2002 (DS)

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. (John 12: 1-7)

Why this waste? Because this is how God loves. Divine love has no interest in restricting itself to what is ‘necessary’. It is no use looking to the events of this coming we
ek for a proportionate, costed response to the needs of the world. It is not means-tested, not tied to productivity or deserving. The generous sacrifice of Jesus cannot be summed up in sober moral equations or legal judgements. God’s love is simply not sensible like that. It is beyond measure, poured out in overwhelming excess over an ungrateful, uncomprehending world. Mary knew this. In her gift to Jesus, she mirrored the wastefulness of God. She was loving as God is loving. Her love was poured out like God’s and for God, beyond thought of cost and beyond any notion of what is sensible.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

Prayer

Jesus, may all my living reflect your extravagant, wasteful love, and may those whose paths I cross catch just a little of the fragrance of your presence.

Day 40 – Freedom

Helensburgh (C) Robert Bell - used with permission

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. (Galatians 5: 1, 13)

 We are not born free. We must learn freedom, and we all start from very different places. A gymnast knows that their effortless freedom is the result of endless practice. For someone with fragile self-esteem, the invitation to freedom will be received vulnerably, and the response will take real courage. But Christian freedom is not a demand; it is a gift. Jesus know what it asks of us and what we need to let go in order to embrace it. Freedom is the practice of obedience. This is not the contradiction it sounds, for to be free is to be living in complete obedience to the environment for which we were made. That environment is the love of God. The freedom he gives us is to become the people he has truly made us to be.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

For Reflection

Think of a time when you experienced a sense of complete freedom. How did it feel?

Prayer

Lord, teach me to serve you with my freedom.

Day 39 – Trust

Sprout (TK)

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? 

 How long will you hide your face from me? 

 How long must I bear pain in my soul, 

 and have sorrow in my heart all day long?... 

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! 

 Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death… 

But I trusted in your steadfast love; 

 my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 

 I will sing to the LORD, 

 because he has dealt bountifully with me. 

(Psalm 13: 1-3, 5-6)

 Today is Saturday. There is another Saturday – the one between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, between the cross and resurrection. It symbolises all the waiting spaces where we find ourselves living between promise and fulfilment, losing and finding, death and life. The community of Saturday people is very varied. It includes, eg those living with serious illness or life-restricting disabilities, and those who accompany them. Victims of social exclusion, prejudice and deprivation are also found here. Saturday people may be those living through unsettling changes in their lives where outcomes are uncertain. This is a community of all faiths and none, with no quick solutions on offer. There are no maps at hand for Saturday people. We usually have a clear idea of what we are waiting for but for Saturday people, the waiting must be open-ended. And open-ended living requires a surrender, an act of trust. We don’t come to it easily. Jesus is found among the Saturday people. We meet him here, with all who wait.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

For Reflection

Whose company are you sharing this Saturday? What might you be waiting for?

Prayer

Lord, help me to stop trying to be in control and, instead, to wait in openness and trust for the future you bring. 

Sky Swing (TK) - R&S Church gates - Swiss Alps (AMN)

Day 38 – Belonging

 Ruth clung to her… (and) said,

“Do not press me to leave you
    or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
    where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
    and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
    there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
    and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”
When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. 

(Ruth 1: 14, 16-18)
 

Ruth is a person who, beyond all prevailing wisdom or common sense, refuses to accept divisions, so her story is a challenging illustration of the cost and gift of ‘belonging’.  Her commitment breaches all boundaries of belonging.  By the end of her story Ruth, an outsider, is to be found at the heart of a community alive with new hope and has become the mother of a family line from which King David, and Jesus, will trace their descent. By her actions, Ruth challenges social, racial, ethnic and religious assumptions and divisions. We are called to be a community without boundaries. We are to be ‘bridge’ people and so become places of meeting, relating and healing. This requires a determined cleaving to each another, beyond our well-guarded frontiers of nationality, class, faith or friendship.
(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)
 
For Reflection
What might such a commitment ask of me beyond my own community and networks?
 
Prayer
Lord, may I help others to know what it means to belong, and in doing so find my own place within your community of love.

Day 37 – Hallowing

 

Pray then in this way: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’.

(Matthew 6: 9)

 In its deepest sense, to hallow is to honour and love another for their own sake. Hallowing is gratuitous – an honouring offered freely, without condition, charge, measure or any thought of self-interest or personal gain. The 12^th century saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, taught that there are four movements in the life of faith. We begin by loving ourselves for our own sake. Then, when faith awakens, we love God but still for our own sake, as one who blesses and meets our needs. Thirdly, we must come to the love of God for God’s own sake – as a gift, for nothing, for the hallowing of the divine name alone. Finally, in the loving of God for God’s own sake, we come to love ourselves truly for God’s sake. There is no contradiction here. God is the life of heaven and earth: it is all sustained in the love that is God’s own being. When his name is truly hallowed, all things find their true place, hallowed in their name and calling.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 For Reflection

Do I love for nothing?

 Remember in Prayer

Those who struggle to love themselves.

Day 36 – Confessing

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1John 1: 8-9)

The Bible uses a variety of ways to speak to God, humanity and sin. Today’s passage speaks of ‘cleansing’. The word recalls the ritual purity required in temple worship, but it might also remind us of the compassion with which Jesus drew near to the marginalised, excluded and broken people whom the world of his day called ‘sinners’. He welcomed and embraced them with such love and touched them so tenderly. The work of cleansing, disinfecting, binding and restoring to health is one of gentleness and understanding. God’s greatest revelation of himself is in the place of our sin, so if we say we have no sin, we miss it all. He meets us here with love that is truthful, that does not deceive us, that forgives and cleanses us.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn) 

Prayer

Lord, help me to come to true repentance.

Day 35 – Rejoicing

Come and Sing at HPC

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4: 4-7)

 Christian joy is not a feeling that comes when life is going right (although we are grateful when it does). It is not based on material circumstances – quite the opposite. The striking thing is how often it is found among those for whom life is far from kind or good. Christian joy has a way of surfacing in the most unlikely circumstances, so it is present as a sign of contradiction. It is, first of all, an encounter with Jesus and his love. It is not, as it might seem, an attempt to spiritualise or ignore the reality of suffering and injustice. Quite the reverse: it is a work of resistance. Joy subverts the temporal realities and mock their claims. It insists, despite all the evidence, on the celebration of a different story. Joy is a work of faithful defiance.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 

Rejoicing (DS)

For Reflection

Rejoice and leap for joy – and if this is too difficult, why not just practice for when you can?

Lockdown Birthday - March 2021 (DM)

Remember in Prayer

Those who have reason to be joyful and those who don’t. Give thanks for the joyful times in your own life.

Day 34 - Hate

Large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14: 25-26)

 Jesus often taught in a style, popular in his day, that used extreme statements or cartoon-like opposites to emphasis a point. The effect was often funny and not to be taken literally. The society of his day was organised around closed structures of belonging, where loyalty was shown first to family and friends. He hated that these closed family-based worlds of self-interest destroyed the possibility of a society based on justice, equality, inclusion, generosity and compassion. The hatred to Jesus calls us is not the opposite of love. It is love rightly directed, passionately opposed to all that destroys, obstructs or undermines his radical community of welcome and justice. It is evil that we hate, not the people caught up in it. Poet William Blake called it ‘seeking the form of heaven with the energy of hell’.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 For Reflection

We all throw the word ‘hate’ around now and again, in relation to many things from foodstuffs to songs. Do we really ‘hate’?

Prayer

Jesus, help me only to hate what you hate, out of the love with which you love.

Day 33 – Death

Rhu & Shandon Churchyard

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life… if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6: 3-4, 8, 11)

 There is no resurrection without dying. It is resurrection from the dead, not somehow bypassing death. We must die to ourselves, enter the waters and be buried with Christ. Some of us will remember a particular time and place where we did this, but for everyone it is a commitment that is revisited and renewed with every challenge that life brings. It may come as some relief, laying down the burden of the old, sterile ways of living that we could not change, but it may also involve struggles with old weaknesses or deep fears. We are the last people we should be trusting for our salvation. But our faith is in Christ and it is completely safe with him. We have been given another life, one that is truly our own.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 Prayer

Lord, please lead me through death to life.

Day 32 – Faces

All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit…For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2Corinthians 3: 18; 4: 6)

 

You know those times when, in the middle of a crowd, someone’s face looks familiar? The writer CS Lewis suggests the moment we finally see the face of Jesus will be such a time. He says: “We will know that we have always known him, for he was present in every loving turning we made to one another, however fleeting.” In all committed relationships there is a vulnerable journey involved – living under the loving gaze of another, daring to trust ourselves as being loved and accepted for who we are, learning to live without masks. The journey of faith is no different. We are held in the steady, secure gaze of one whose love is true.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 

For Reflection and Prayer

‘Come’, my heart says, ‘seek his face.’ Your face, Lord, do I seek. (Psalm 28: 8)

Children's Home Monrovia (DS)

Kelvingrove Gallery (AMN)

Day 31 – Darkness

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1Corinthians 13: 11-12)

 

Darkness actually expands our vision and sensitivity: we see much further at night. Without regular sight of that vast wilderness above us, we are impoverished and fall prey to strange assumptions about ourselves. Darkness also helps to interpret the light. Every artist knows how closely dark and shade must work with light if a face is to be revealed in its fullness and depth. The dim, foggy vision of which Paul speaks is not the failure of faith. Rather, it flows from faith. It may even be our greater witness to this world that we do not know or see clearly. Testimony is not to what we know. It is to the mystery of a vision and purpose for this world that is God’s alone. To live there, our capacity for unknowing must be infinite.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

 

Prayer

Lord, help me to deepen my capacity to contain unknowing and to walk in the dark with you.

 

Remember in Prayer

Those whose way is unclear; those who feel overwhelmed by dark thoughts; those who yearn to see light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Day 30 – Storm

Helensburgh Pier (DS)

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. (1Kings 19: 9-13)

Elijah lived in violent and turbulent times. He is exhausted, angry and despairing of life. There in his mountain exile, Elijah finds that God answers no questions and takes no sides. Nor does he offer much comfort. Instead, God stages a drama – a whirlwind, an earthquake, a fire – but God is in none of them. Then comes – what exactly? ‘Sheer silence’. No one knows quite how to translate these words. Elijah’s journey was from the mountain of his powerful achievements for God – from thunder and fire – to this silent, divine ‘nothing’. His faith must be recentred outside all human measures of presence, power and significance. What is here for him? Just God. We too need to lay down the burdens of faith and work to be deeply recentred, if we are not to despair. In the heart of the storms, with whatever we grasp of the world’s anguish, we wait in the ‘sheer silence’. And what is here for us? Just God.

(Extract from Dust & Glory by David Runcorn)

For Reflection

Faith is not an escape from a difficult world. It is a way of being present in the midst of it.

Prayer

Teach me, Lord, in the midst of this world’s anguish, to find the eye of the storm.