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Thursday, March
4, 2010 Then he told this
parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking
for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For
three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find
none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil? He replied, ‘Sir, let
it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it
bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke
13:6-9) “Give it another year
to grow,” was the gardener’s plea to the owner of the vineyard. A
little manure, the right environment: patience, hope, trust and more
time. When we are tempted to give up, the Gardener holds us in the arms
of Hope. We pray in hope. We pray through our feelings of
hopelessness. We pray to the One whose hope never fades or fails
us. We pray to the One who holds all life in arms of Hope.
This week in our prayers, as we contemplate the gospel reading for the
third Sunday of Lent, let us imagine our world held in the arms of Hope. (Response to each petition: We
pray in the hope that life will blossom in this barren place.) We pray in hope for
the people who live on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda where a powerful mudslide took
most of the lives of a village of 350 people. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. We pray in hope for
the people who in so many places around the world, are struggling to rebuild
lives following recent earthquakes: Taiwan,
Chile, Haiti, eastern Afghanistan
and Pakistan. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. At least 14 people
have been killed in Baghdad on the first day of voting in Iraq's parliamentary elections, when
suicide bombers attacked polling places. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. HIV has become the
leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age worldwide,
reports the UN program on HIV/Aids. UNAids launched a five-year action plan
addressing the gender issues which put women at risk. One of the key issues,
it says, is that up to 70% of women worldwide have been forced to have unprotected
sex. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. Dozens of militants
armed with assault rifles attacked a security checkpoint in Pakistan's volatile northwest, sparking
a gun battle that left 30 insurgents and one soldier dead. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. A stampede among
thousands of poor villagers scrambling for free food and clothes at a
commemorative event killed 63 people Thursday at a Hindu temple in northern India and injured dozens of others.
Nearly all the victims were women and children. The stampede was so intense
it knocked down a gate at the compound surrounding the temple in the small
town of Kunda, on the northern plains of Uttar Pradesh state. We pray in the hope that life will
blossom in this barren place. We pray in hope for
places around the world where conflict and violence seem unending. We name
these and other places of concern, and hold them in hope offering our
response, “we pray in the hope that life will blossom in this barren place”
after each area is named… Colombia… Afghanistan… Somalia… East Timor… Sri Lanka… Sudan… Democratic Republic
of Congo… Zimbabwe… Iraq… Palestine… Israel… Let us live in the
belief that if we patiently nurture hope in one another, and if we join our
hearts in hope, life will blossom again in the seemingly barren places of our
world. Amen. |
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