Claimed, gathered and sent

Here are some thoughts on this Sunday's text. This is our last Sunday of the Season of Creation, Mountain Sunday. This was sent electronically to the people of St.Timothy Lutheran Church. Isaiah 65:17-25 1 7 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies  at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall no...

I was moved by this prayer on the ELCA prayer website: Thank you, Lord, for always answering prayer, but not indulging my every petty, private give me. Thank you winnowing and refining, vetoing and delaying, refusing and revising. Thank you for being God and never less, for freeing me for wide horizons, for protecting me from my limited vision and wayward will. Thank you for foiling my every effort to unseat you and make myself king. T hank you for keeping it safe for me to pray. --Gerhard E. Frost From Seasons of a Lifetime: A Treasury of Meditations (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989, p. 118) candle picture