Simple Theology

Kate Braestrup is a chaplain to game wardens on search-and-rescue missions in Maine. “There, she says, the rubber meets the road theologically. And her sense of life, death, and God is formed by what happens between and among people… If someone asks, you know, ‘Where was God in this?’ I'll say, ‘God was in all the people that came to try to help, to try to find your child.… And so I often say, the question isn't whether we're going to have to do hard, awful things, because we are. And we all are. The question is whether we have to do them alone.” Her “ministry of presence” to the wounded was in part formed by those who nurtured her in the wake of her husband’s death. “The longer I work and live the simpler my theology gets... that God is love. And I mean that pretty literally…God is that force that drives us to really see each other and to really behold each other and care for each other and respond to each other.”
Presence in the Wild , Speaking of Faith.

My prayer for the congregation?

Loving God, in your wisdom you created companionship for man along with night and day, water and land. In times of sorrow, distress, hardships, and pain let us attend to one another with thoughts for others first and revealing more about our role in your kingdom than hours of self-contemplation. Let us also allow ourselves to be nurtured and cared for so that our companions can realize their potential in ministry to others. Let us find the simple gestures of love in the most complex situations, and learn to bring it back to that most common denominator, where we can find your touch in our midst. Let us rejoice that above all, God is love! Amen