Sun. Mar. 15, 2009 (Connie Siedler)

On the Ides of March, Connie Siedler was our guest speaker. Connie is from Germany, lives at the Menno Simons Centre and studies theology at Regent College. Although we just celebrated Christmas recently, with all its customary bright lights, colours and feasts, we need to remember that Jesus was born into a poor family at a time when the Jews were really suffering. The Book of Lamentations had already explored the overwhelming sense of loss the Jews felt while living under foreign occupation and suffering the destruction of their capital city, temple, culture and self respect. Within Lamentations, just as the brief book reaches its apex, there are words of hope (ch. 3.21-26) which proclaim God as the Lord of hope and as the God who both punishes and remains faithful to humanity, even while being rejected by them. Real life is not like e-mail or air travel, both of which would seem to be instantaneous to people living centuries ago. In real life, we often need to wait, patiently and quietly. We of course prefer to be active, even proactive, but for many situations in life, prolonged times of waiting can neither be rushed nor shortened by anything we do. The Psalmists compared this to someone waiting for--yearning for--the dawn. Lamentations tells us that our waiting can indeed be accompanied by hope, regardless of how difficult our situation may seem. [JEK] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday Mar. 15th, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.