Sunday Stretch: Vol. 73

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

Hi Readers,

Happy St. Patrick’s Day and happy 5th(!) Sunday of Lent. Next Sunday will already mark Palm/Passion Sunday and thus the beginning of Holy Week. I encourage you to mark your calendars for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services in your local area or online. Those services are always some of the most meaningful of the year for me, and Easter is simply not the same without fully embracing the entirety of Holy Week.

As for today, it’s a special day in Ireland and for Irish Americans, and if you can get past stout beer and shots of whiskey, the story of St. Patrick himself is a really fascinating one full of rich stories and debated history. I think I’m a “wee bit” Irish on my mom’s side, though the ancestor we initially thought was Irish might have come first from Scotland, so it’s all a little bit murky. But my part-Irish husband and I did get to spend a few days in the Emerald Isle back in 2011, and it was truly magical.

May the luck and blessing of the Irish be with you all today!

Cliffs of Moher, 2011. Preemptive sorrow at having to leave this place!

Let’s get to the texts …

Bible Stories

Jer. 31:31   The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,^a says the LORD. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

I want you to pause for a moment and look back at the first five words of this text. I find them to be immensely comforting and powerful in their blessed assurance. The days are surely coming. The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

If nothing else, in these fraught and historical days of climate change, war, and political unrest - I retain my faith in these words, however long a day is in the Lord’s eyes. The days are surely coming. God keeps God’s covenants.