interrupted by pneumonia

Just when life with myeloma felt like it was becoming a predictable weekly journey with my medications pneumonia interrupted everything. It was a winter in which I seemed to  catch every cold that was in the air. That was the first clue that my immune system is not running at full capacity. Then February rolled around and a fever took me to the local hospital. Eighteen days later I returned home after a successful course of antibiotics. I see now why infections - and especially pneumonia - are dangerous for those of us living with myeloma. Our compromised immune systems make us particularly susceptible to these unwelcome guests. I am glad to be recovering strength and health as spring arrives here.

shocking grace

Once again this year University Hill Congregation has prepared an online daily Lenten Devotional. This is the seventeenth year in which members of the congregation have been invited to host a scripture passage and to listen for a Word from God on behalf of us all. You can read more about this tradition here. This year I was invited to host Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is my contribution ...

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant …. for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

We are accustomed to singing of grace as “amazing”. That it is. But here, when Jeremiah discovers it – hears it – on the lips of the LORD (“Yahweh”) it is shocking. Jeremiah is well known for preaching “Jeremiads” – sermons filled with rage and judgment. The LORD is furious with the ways in which God’s own people systematize injustice and whitewash its sin with religious rituals. The LORD is the source of the coming downfall and exile.