Beloved of God,

The New Year is here, heaped high—as always—with hopes and dreams (with a good measure of economic uncertainty folded in) about what the coming months will bring.  The parking lots at the West Seattle “Y’ are full.  Optimism for acquiring new habits is high.  Budgets and reports for annual meetings are being prepared.  Health insurance deductibles have been zeroed out. Calendar dates are beginning to fill.  The post-Christmas shift to a new calendar brings with it these and many other outward signs that a New Year is upon us.

In a few weeks we will witness the inauguration of our nation’s 44^th President, Barack Obama.  It’s hard to imagine a time when the collective burden of hope and expectation has weighed as heavily on a president’s shoulders as it does and will on his. Like all those before him, Barack and his family need to be in our daily prayers!

Some things, of course, are not new. After December’s heavy snows, the heavy rain of recent days has sent virtually every river on the west side of the Cascades into flood stage.  This is sadly predictable, and will be impacting the lives and livelihoods of many of our fellow Washingtonians for months to come.

The conflict in Gaza, which in recent days has claimed hundreds of victims, is another tragic verse in a long tragic tale.  A number of ELCA and ELCC (Canada) Bishops are in the Middle East right now (including our own Chris Boerger) on a trip that was two years in planning.  (You can read about the trip in Bishop’s Boerger article elsewhere in this addition of Peace Notes.)

On Epiphany (January 6) these North America bishops joined members of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church of Amman at the banks of the Jordan River to celebrate with a Eucharist the blessing of a parcel overlooking the river given the church for a retreat center and worship facility.  The site where they gathered was one of those believed to be where Jesus was baptized.

The Jordan River is reported to be remnant of river Jesus would have seen, having been greatly reduced in recent years by the siphoning of its water for irrigation and other uses. The shallow, narrow river is brownish green in color and exceedingly murky.  “Murky” is an apt word for describing the way forward in the Middle East crisis.

But “murky” is also an apt word for describing the world context in which Jesus began his ministry.  Yet, in spite of all that murkiness, Jesus saw with clarity the mantle God had prepared for him to assume.   Thomas Troeger’s hymn What Ruler Wades through Murky Streams (above) captures a sense of that clarion call and the depth of passionate commitment which it would require of Jesus.  The hymn reminds us, too, that God’s voice through the gospel calls you and me now to “come bow beneath the flowing wave.”

Indeed, Christ stands even now in the murky waters of our world, in the murky waters of a washed out Western Washington, in the murky waters of personal lives which have run aground, and beckons us to wade in the water with the promise that resurrection, not death, is God’s will for us.

When we gather at the end of this month to look back our collective ministry of 2008 and look forward to what God is calling us to be and do together in 2009, we do well to wade into that murky stream with our hands and fingers firmly intertwined with his.

God’s grace and call abide with you in the New Year!

Pastor Erik