A Poem, A Proverb, A Painting, A Prayer: A Lenten Journey-- Day 10: Friday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

This is the tenth in a series of daily Lenten devotionals put together by Mother Leslie for this season of Lent, 2025. We hope this proves to be uplifting to you through your Lenten journey.

If you would like to see previous devotionals, Look under "Home Worship Materials" on the Site map, or click here.

Day 10: Friday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

Poem: Refugees —(read each line from top to bottom then bottom to top)

They have no need of our help

So do not tell me

These haggard faces could belong to you or I

Should life have dealt a different hand

We need to see them for who they really are

Chancers and scroungers

Layabouts and loungers

With bombs up their sleeves

Cut-throats and thieves

They are not

Welcome here

We should make them

Go back to where they came from

They cannot

Share our food

Share our homes

Share our countries

Instead let us

Build a wall to keep them out

------------- Brian Bilston (Phil Millicheap) (1970- ) British poet and businessman who started on Twitter and obscures his identity a la Banksy

Proverb

“You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

--------------Deuteronomy 10:19, from today’s Daily Office

Painting: Hoping to Survive, Razieh Gholami, 2019, Afghan refugee in Europe

Prayer: For Refugees and Those in Distress

Let us open up our hearts to You,

O Divine Love,

that they may teach us your ways of justice and peace. 

From the shadow of your wings may the weary take refuge, O Holy One;

let us gather strength from your loving embrace.

Shield the homeless and the refugee

from the whirlwind of violence and want, O God:

let us welcome the traveler into our midst.

May we help bring peace

to hearts torn asunder by war, cruelty, and indifference,

and may their cry come to You, O God of Justice. 

Merciful God, place your hand of healing

over all who are ill or in distress:

guide and strengthen the hands of doctors, nurses, and caregivers.

Together, O Lord, we lift before you these beloved children

whose hope is in You---

and in us.

Amen.

-------------Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, 2015

A Poem, A Proverb, A Painting, A Prayer: A Lenten Journey-- Day 9: Thursday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

This is the ninth in a series of daily Lenten devotionals put together by Mother Leslie for this season of Lent, 2025. We hope this proves to be uplifting to you through your Lenten journey.

If you would like to see previous devotionals, Look under "Home Worship Materials" on the Site map, or click here.

Today's theme: Unity with God

Day 9: Thursday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

Poem: From The Echoes Return Slow

There are nights that are so still

that I can hear the small owl calling

far off, and a fox barking

miles away. It is then that I lie

in the lean hours awake, listening

to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic

rising and falling, rising and falling

wave on wave on the long shore

by the village, that is without light

and companionless. And the thought comes

of that other being who is awake, too,

letting our prayers break on him

not like this for a few hours,

but for days, years, for eternity.

--------R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Welsh poet and Anglican priest,  from Collected Later Poems, 1988-2000, p. 51.

Proverb:

“Between God and soul there is no between.”

----------Dame Julian of Norwich (1343-@1416) , English anchorite, theologian, and author

Painting: Prayer in Church, Gerard Sekoto, 1947, South African

Prayer: A Time for Embracing

Lord Jesus, whose arms are eternally stretched wide to embrace us, 

be with us this day, and teach us. 

 Teach us to embrace your call to repentance and renewal, 

that we may be brought before You as little children. 

Teach us to embrace this day and its beauty, 

rather than worrying about tomorrow. 

Teach us to embrace the poor and the outcast, 

for we are one in body and spirit. 

Teach us to embrace love, 

regardless of the cost. 

Teach us to embrace obedience, 

to empty ourselves so that You may fill us completely. 

Teach us to embrace those 

who do not understand us or reject us, 

and to love them wholeheartedly anyway. 

Precious Savior, 

place your hand of blessing over those we now name, 

drawing them to You in your mercy.

Amen.

----------Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, March, 2021

A Poem, A Proverb, A Painting, A Prayer: A Lenten Journey-- Day 8: Wednesday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

This is the eighth in a series of Lenten devotionals put together by Mother Leslie for this season of Lent, 2025. We hope this proves to be uplifting to you through your Lenten journey.

If you would like to see previous devotionals, Look under "Home Worship Materials" on the Site map, or click here.

Today's theme: Holy Work

Day 8: Wednesday after the 1st Sunday in Lent

Poem: Poem: Sabbath Poem: Amish Economy

We live by mercy if we live.

To that we have no fit reply

But working well and giving thanks

Loving God, loving one another,

To keep Creation's neighborhood.

And my friend David Kline told me,

"It falls strangely on Amish ears,

This talk of how you find yourself.

We Amish, after all, don't try

To find ourselves. We try to lose

Ourselves"-- and thus are lost within

The found world of sunlight and rain

Where fields are green and then are ripe,

And the people eat together by

The charity of God, who is kind

Even to those who give no thanks.

In morning light, men in dark clothes

Go out among the beasts and fields.

Lest the community be lost,

Each day they must work out the bond

Between goods and their price: the garden

Weeded by sweat is flowerbright;

The wheat shocked in shorn field, clover

Is growing where wheat grew; the crib

Is golden with gathered corn,

While in the world of the found selves,

Lost to the sunlit, rainy world,

The motor-driven cannot stop.

This is the world where value is

Abstract, and preys on things, and things

Are changed to thoughts that have a price.

Cost + greed - fear = price:

Maury Tulleen thus laid it out.

The need to balance greed and fear

Affords no stopping place, no rest,

And need increases as we fail.

But now, in summer dusk, a man

Whose hair and beard curl like spring ferns

Sits under the yard trees, at rest,

His smallest daughter on his lap.

This is because he rose at dawn,

Cared for his own, helped his neighbors,

Worked much, spent little, kept his peace.

--------- Wendell Berry (1934- ), American farmer, poet, essayist, agrarian, 1995, from This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979-2013, 2013

Proverb:

To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly.

---------1 Corinthians 4:11-13a

Painting: Short Hoe, Consuela Soto, 2017 (a migrant worker in Bellingham Washington)

Prayer: Remembering Others

O God, when I have food,

help me to remember the hungry;

When I have work,

help me to remember the jobless;

When I have a home,

help me to remember those who have no home at all;

When I am without pain,

help me to remember those who suffer,

And remembering,

help me to destroy my complacency;

bestir my compassion,

and be concerned enough to help;

By word and deed,

those who cry out for what we take for granted.

----------- The Rev. Samuel F. Pugh (1904-2007), Disciples of Christ minister, author, and poet