God.

We are on the edge of a time that we don’t understand.

That is always true, of course,
because we are always on the edge of the future and we are poor acknowledgers that our lives are limited.

But there is tenuous peace in Israel and active lava in the Democratic Republic of Congo and cyclones and COVID in India. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of people are aware that the future doesn’t depend on 401(k) savings but on finding a safe bed for the night.

A year and a week ago, George Floyd was alive and many of the 600,000 people who have died of COVID-19 were still alive and the people we know who have died this week were alive, and they all had plans. So did their families.

God.

It’s easy in the hospital to think about the uncertainty and ending of life.

And to be immobilized by the inevitability of death.

But you invite us, in the face of death, to accept that it exists and then to live the life we have in conversation with you, both now and forever.

You invite us to care for others as you have cared for us, to love others as you have loved us, to comfort others as you have comforted us, to live with others as you have lived with us.

I ask that you will give us courage to accept that our comfort is uncertain. I ask that you will give us discernment to see the injustice others live in, and the energy to respond.

I ask that you will give us peace, and the capacity to make that peace for others.

We ask through Christ our Lord.

Amen.