God, today I’m thinking about all the stuff,
the stuff that we worry about, the money and the possessions and the taxes, and the things.
And I can imagine Jesus, whispering in our ears
Reminding us, coaxing us, murmuring to us “don’t worry about the stuff,
I didn’t put you here to worry about the stuff….
I put you here to worry about the people….
Consider the lilies of the field,
the birds and the bees,
and the cute koala bears….”
I think about how generous you are God, how you don’t mind if we give money and laws to Caesar and the government, how utterly unbothered you are by the fact.
Because that’s not what you are worried about.
Instead, you are too busy learning the name of every single being in the universe. Instead you are too busy
healing up the wounds of the forgotten
telling those who live in-between that their lives are beautiful and radical and good
you are too busy doing the real work of the world.
So, though I need the stuff God, you know, to live.
I will try to make sure everyone has enough stuff,
and worry instead, about the people.
God please help us to love and worry and serve the people, and remind us–all of us,
that you created us, not to make stuff
but to love people.
In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen.
Feel free to share/adapt/use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
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Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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