Sunday’s Scripture ~ Ezekiel 47:1-2
When I was in elementary school I would spend a week with my brother at my grandparents’ home in Merritt Island. They lived on Pelican Court and it was paradise: bike riding in the cul-de-sac, spying fish off the dock, imagining wild adventures on my grandfather’s boat while it was still safely anchored in the canal, and all of the orange-flavored Flintstone push-pops I could eat.
Nothing – and I mean nothing – beats an orange-flavored Flintstone push-pop.
When you opened the door of my grandparents’ home the hallway that started at the front door came to its end at what we would now call a chair and a half. At the time it was blue with flecks of white; presently, it is covered in a cream colored fabric with cranberry toile accents. No matter the fabric, that chair and a half is a seat of blessing.
As a child I would sit in that chair and listen to my Gramps lightly snore through whatever show he was watching. No one dared to change the channel because he would instantly awake! I would also sit in that chair and my Nonnie would read to me. I would sit so close to her that when she tucked me into bed I would smell like her Coco Chanel No. 5.
My grandparents no longer live in that home on Pelican Court and that chair is no longer blue with flecks of white. I still see that chair each time I visit my grandparents and when I see it I remember the laughter, the lessons, and the love that I lived sitting in that seat of blessing near and with my Nonnie and Gramps. I like to think that chair was built purposefully to have more than one person in it…I never felt like I was crowding or being crowded. I felt like I fit. I fit there with my grandparents, and there, so close to them, I received blessings that I will never forget.
In our Scripture text for this week Ezekiel stands near the source of blessing in the newly constructed temple of the Lord. He sees the water flowing east from under the temple’s threshold and out into world – and as we continue studying this chapter we will learn that this water from God brings blessing wherever it goes. God’s people have been in exile – estranged from their God, their homes, and their true selves. In the vision cast before Ezekiel in Chapter 47 God gathers all that has been scattered and broken back together and brings healing. It is a vision of blessing; after a time of trial and sorrow comes a new dawn and new day. Because of God’s goodness and faithfulness to God’s people, there will be time for laughter, and lessons, and love. These blessings flow from the temple just as they flow from that chair in my grandparents’ home, only what I experienced and experience of blessing from that chair is but a glimpse of what we experience and will experience from God.
And that, my friends, is such incredible blessing.
I hope you will join us in worship over the next several weeks as we learn more about God’s blessings and our invitation to steward them to all our neighbors to the glory of God’s Kingdom. This is an important time as we discern, pray, and plan for our next season of ministry. I look forward to worshipping with you.
Prayer: “Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.”* Amen.
*”Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” The United Methodist Hymnal 400.
The Sunday Stiletto 