“Mayday! Mayday!”
No, I’m not celebrating the first day of this month with its traditional dances ‘round the maypole and posies secretly hung on sweethearts’ doors. Yet perhaps only those of a ‘certain generation’ will recognize that, prior to the adoption of S.O.S, “Mayday” was the internationally recognized distress call, a corruption of the French “m’aidez” – “Help me!”
The events of these last weeks might well induce us to cry “Mayday!”, Help us, O God. We have been shocked and grieved by situations from the Boston Marathon bombing to the devastating explosion in Texas to an earthquake in China to floods in our area to the tragic incident of our bishop’s accident and the resulting death . . . to say nothing of ongoing crises in Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.
We live in a world of natural calamities and human failures, and even though we are in Easter’s celebratory season, we find ourselves often back amid the sufferings of Lent, wondering why such brokenness continues and what will help us through the darkness.
What helps us, ultimately, is that God did not merely send us a rule book for getting things back on track nor even an example of how to get through it. In Jesus God sent us a Savior, one who shows us that God is with us in the midst of sufferings, whose cross is the pledge that God takes all earth’s brokenness into Himself and whose resurrection is the proclamation that God has the final victory over all death and destruction.
Our baptism into Christ does not make us perfect nor does it fix everything in our lives and in our world. But it does assure us that we are forgiven, that we are loved, and that we are helped each and every day by the gracious, renewing power of our God who will restore all things in his ultimate new creation.
Yours in Faith, Pastor Jeff Jacobs
