A MESSAGE FROM REV. KAREN KINNEY: IN THE MIDST OF PAINFUL TIMES
Grace and peace to you,
As I mentioned this past week, on Sunday, July 6, our worship will be a Service of Healing and Wholeness. Let me explain as I saw a lot of “what is that” looks!
A Service of Healing and Wholeness focuses on 
God’s healing power and the restoration of wholeness in individuals and the community, encompassing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. It is a time to acknowledge vulnerability, seek God’s comfort, and experience reconciliation with God and others.
Just as Jeremiah relied on God, acknowledging God’s power and love for God’s people, this service helps us to do the same, acknowledging God as the source of healing and wholeness, inviting all of us to trust in God to guide us, restoring and renewing us.
Our journey thus far through Jeremiah has given us all the opportunity to explore our pain, our grief, what has wounded us, as individuals and as this community of faith. This service, while looking and feeling a bit different, moves us along on the path, helping us name those things and through communion, anointing with oil and being prayed over, experience healing and reconciliation. We will end on a hopeful, joy-filled note that moves us to the following two Sundays of planting and building and hearing about a new covenant God is making.
If you are worshiping online that day, please let us know if you would like a home visit for communion, anointing and prayer over the next week. You can contact me at kkinney@fpc-bethlehem.org.
I will write more next week, but I hope, even though it is a holiday weekend, we will see you on July 6.
Now for this Sunday, June 29, we are thinking about what gives us hope when we recall or experience difficult times/memories. What do we do with painful, difficult memories that force us to face hard truths? What do we do with hopeful memories that ask us to recall beautiful truths about God? Psalm 42 speaks to the hopeful memories in the midst of painful, turbulent times.
The Psalmist recalls all the times God has been present, helping God’s people in those painful turbulent times. Contrast this with our passages from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-31), where Jeremiah is instructed to write down everything the Lord has been saying to the King and the people about their corruption, their lack of care for the oppressed and marginalized. The King doesn’t want to hear it or read it and so he destroys the scroll. He tries to erase their history because he doesn’t want to hear it or deal with it.
As a history major in college, it is distressing to me to destroy the hard truths of any nation, but especially our nation. What do we do when our painful history of racism (slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights), LGBTQ+ history (Stonewall), of women’s accomplishments is erased? How do we face the hard truths knowing that God is present to us and God has been present all along to give us hope? What in our own individual or FPC history do we wish not to recall? Can we be like the Psalmist and in the midst of pain and despair recall the good things God has done? Lots of questions to consider. Come and see, come and explore.
Blessings,
Pastor Karen