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10:30 am Worship

4/2 Palm Sunday - 10:30 am

4/6 Maundy Thursday/Good Friday Service – 7 pm

4/9 Easter Sonrise Breakfast & Meditation – 9 am

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Music Program Director opening at RUMC

Part-time position to direct 10+ person choir and plan music program for this friendly church that loves music.

Please call the office for more information. 419-666-5323

Saturday, April 1, 2023

Psalm 137: 1-4

¹ By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion.
² As for our harps, we hung them up on the trees in the midst of that land.
³ For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
and our oppressors called for mirth: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
⁴ How shall we sing the Lord's song upon an alien soil?

A white-breasted nuthatch came this morning, clinging desperately to the bark of the pin oak in my front yard as the wind threatened to blow it loose. Like the woodpeckers, they walk straight down the sides of a tree trunk, always face first. The nuthatches and woodpeckers remind me of ancient hard-headed prophets and priests, seeming to walk unafraid through the darkest valleys of life.

They faced head-on the question asked most days by most people on earth.

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?”

Like the oak tree, its whole being swaying in the strong winds, they stood firm in their whole-hearted conviction that God loved them. No matter if they were hauled off in chains to a foreign land. There, they found themselves asked to sing the songs of Zion. No matter how hard it was, they sang songs of hope.

Ezekiel saw a new temple rising, a river of life pouring down from it onto the dry lands. Jeremiah envisioned a word of love, written on all human hearts. Isaiah saw a level highway created in the mountain wilderness so Israel could return home. These men suffered as they saw their own sins and those of their people. They endured.

In the end, they hoped.

I have found this to be life itself. Like the nuthatch, I had to walk face first into the storm. Like the oak, I bent before uncontrollable forces yet stood firm. Like the ancient prophets and priests, I found hope to be my only sustenance. Perhaps we all, like them, should find the courage to endure and to trust in invisible hope and love written on human hearts.

We might even want to look around, see those facing such storms, and extend a helping hand. It's the only way to sing the Lord's song. 

Hymn of the day: Rivers of Babylon. On Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSxQJUv1e8k or click media link on rossfordumc.org.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler