Sue Emeleus, Eremos Council member, offers the following lament in response to the heartbreaking news of bushfire devastation this past week in Victoria. (This is an excerpt of the liturgy she has written for St. George's Paddington service on Sunday, 15th February.)
Leader: Grieving God, we come in lament for our brothers and sisters.
A: We are exhausted from watching, from listening, from feeling their pain. There is a weariness that grips us.
Leader: So many sought to survive, and we grieve for those who didn’t.
A: Those we know personally and the hundreds of others whose stories we have felt.
Leader: Energising God, we sense Your strength and compassion in those who came to help.
A: The volunteer and professional firefighters, and all those who form parts of emergency services. Police, paramedics, drivers, defence force recruits.
Leader: Healing God, we have watched the professional healers who have chosen to specialise in burns treatment.
A: The nurses and all the other medical staff who must watch and participate in treating immense pain and suffering.
Leader: We listen without comprehension to the statistics:
A: The burnt out small towns with an increasing number of dead; the mothers and fathers who lost children and siblings and parents.
Leader: We are haunted my memories of those who preach an angry God:
A: A God who required the death of the Son. Yet we experience a God who is powerful in energising all who show love.
Dorothy McRae-McMahon, friend of Eremos, offers an affirmation.
In God,
our deaths are not the final word,
our moments of crisis
are part of eternal possibility,
and our weakness
is taken up into the courage of God.
In Christ,
our humanness is touched with divine life,
our tears are mingled
with the longing love of Jesus,
and our solidarity with those who suffer
is joined by the Godly presence.
In the Spirit,
There are no boundaries on the dream,
No endings to hope,
And a world beyond our seeing.
We will never live beyond the cherishing of God.
BLESSING
We commit ourselves to the God who is never absent, who goes on creating but who sometimes seems helpless. As co-creators, may we go with the sense that the outpouring of love we are experiencing across the nation might flow towards us, and from us, as we embrace each other and those whose lives might seem to have been destroyed; knowing that the power of God’s love will be sufficient. Amen.