Two weeks ago today I was in Nashville for the Festival of Homiletics. It was an incredible week, made all the more incredible by the experiences of reuniting with seminary friends, meeting my cousin’s children for the first time, and seeing my dear friend Sarah preach in her new church. I met with my spiritual director on Wednesday of this week and was trying to explain to her this amazing feeling of spiritual wholeness that I felt that week.
Meeting Evan
Meme and Me! (wearing the cupcake hat I knit for her)
The best I could explain to her was by sharing with her the story of coming into the city of Chattanooga with Patricia after meeting my cousin’s children: We were rounding a corner downtown and I was telling her how extremely blessed and full of joy I felt after such a week and then there in the sky all of a sudden were fireworks bursting across the sky. Though I know they were for the baseball game that had finished a few minutes prior, they felt like a physical manifestation of my own joy. Fireworks. Bright, unignorably celebratory lights flashing across the sky. A monumental sort of thing that must be experienced and cannot be contained.
Then, also on Wednesday I received the latest installment of the Atlas Project from my favorite band, Sleeping at Last. As they so often speak to my heart and experience, I was only slightly surprised by a new song on there called, “In the Embers,” about fireworks:
We live and we die
Like fireworks,
Our legacies hide
in the embers.
May our stories catch fire
and burn bright enough to catch God’s eye.
we live and we dieLike fireworks we pull apart the dark,
Compete against the stars with all of our hearts.
‘Til our temporary brilliance turns to ash,
We pull apart the darkness while we can.May we live and die
A valorous life,
May we write it all down
In cursive light,
So we pray we were made
in the image of a figure eight,
May we life and dieLike fireworks we pull apart the dark,
Compete against the stars with all of our hearts.
‘Til our temporary brilliance turns to ash,
We pull apart the darkness while we can.
This Festival of Homiletics, this time of great speakers and deep worship for me felt like an experience of “stories catch[ing] fire and burn[ing] bright enough to catch God’s eye.”
It is my prayer that this might be the experience of all worship of all preaching. Perhaps my prayers of illumination should revise Psalm 19:14 to say, “may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts catch fire and burn bright enough to catch God’s eye.” Amen.
Presbydestrian 