Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-01
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
Wholeness.
That’s what we need and want for our world, for ourselves and neighbors, and our beloved church. The Hebrew tradition calls it “shalom,” which means an all-encompassing peace. Wholeness. Well-being. Welfare.
This kind of wholeness transcends physical health. It’s a spiritual thing. It’s what Herbert Richardson felt in the movie “Just Mercy” right before he was executed. Since Vietnam, his mind was unsettled, and his life was addled by night sweats and terror. His time on death-row equalled constant emotional anguish. In the death chamber he said, “I have no ill feeling and hold nothing against anyone.” And for the first time in the film we see a placid man.
“Shalom” is what Auther Moses “Truluv” felt even though he was sad upon the death of his wife Nola. It’s the feeling he shared with a frightened, pregnant teenager, and a grieving nextdoor neighbor in Elizabeth Berg’s novel The Story of Arthur Truluv. (A member of our church wrote me and said she wishes she could be more like Arthur, and to me, she is.)
Shalom is what my family felt for a few moments last night when we watched the brief movie from their childhood, “The Snowman” based on Raymond Briggs’ classic picture book. (All three of my boys are home for my birthday.)
Join us tonight for our WEDNESDAY evening gathering for a “Service of Wholeness.” We start at 7:00 and we end no later than 8:00. Together, let’s pray for shalom.
See you there. Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Take on Race:
Structural racism can show up in multiple ways, including:
- Housing discrimination that limits where people of color can live and steers them to rental markets rather than home ownership.
- Laws and policies that deny people of color access to quality education, employment and adequate health care.
- Food apartheid — areas deliberately devoid of quality, affordable fresh food.
- Mass incarceration and criminal justice systems that disproportionately target people of color with lengthier sentences, “stop-and-frisk” laws, the over-policing of communities of color, the school-to-prison pipeline, etc.
- Environmental racism — the dumping of hazardous waste, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of access to clean water that results in a range of serious health problems in communities of color.
Where have you seen racism at work?
NEWS:
Make a donation to DREAAM for your friend’s upcoming birthday!
Thursdays
Compassion, Peace & Justice 11 am
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Youth Meeting 4 pm
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Good Word: (read this several times…)
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
8 The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
9 My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
11 for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.”
Let us pray
Thank you, Lord, for
sweaty-high humidity
that reminds me
of what I’m made of.
Thank you for hot
temperatures that
remind me of what I
hoped for last January.
Thank you for long days
to enjoy you and the
sweet, sweet memory of
neighbors and friends.
AMEN.
PEACE to you all,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
