Last Sunday in our time of prayer a member of the congregation remembered Rosa Parks. Ms. Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott when, on December 1, 1955, she refused to give up her place on the bus.
When I went to her website, I learned that in 1943 this same Rosa Parks had been forced off a city bus for doing the same thing. She wrote on her website, “I would like to be remembered as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”
In this Advent Season as I remember Rosa Parks I am thinking of the hymn, “Come, O long-expected Jesus, born to set your people free. From our fears and sins release us; Christ in whom our rest shall be.”
Another member of the congregation invited us to remember December 7th in our prayers this week. When I lived in Hawai’i, I visited Ford’s Island, the scene of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and, more often, I visited the National Cemetery of the Pacific, most commonly called “Punchbowl” because of its location.
On a plaque in the cemetery I read these words spoken by General Douglas MacArthur in his Farewell Address to Congress,
“The problem [of war] is basically theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence. . . . It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”
The last verse of the hymn cited above reads, “You our strength and consolation, come salvation to impart; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart. Born your people to deliver, born a child, and yet a king, born to reign in us forever, born your gracious realm to bring. By your own eternal Spirit rule in our hearts alone; by your all sufficient merit raise us to your royal throne.”
Amen.
David Hansen