“Peace Moments” for Lamoni Heartland Online Worships
As one ministry of the Lamoni Heartland Peace, Justice and Poverty Relief Task Force, “Peace Moments” will be brief peace and justice focused statements or meditations designed to lift up concern and motivate action on a variety of peace and justice issues. They will be read immediately prior to the prayers for peace in LHMC virtual worships.
They will begin with the first Sunday of Advent, November 29 and continue through the 2020-2021 lectionary. Several writers are contributing these worship elements. Each one will prepare about ten topical peace moments. Typical length is about 300 words, 2-3 minutes in length.
Themes may include topics in the area of racial justice/racial equity/reparations, indigenous rights, LGBTQ rights, sacredness of creation (care for the earth, including global warming issues), rural poverty, gender equity, poverty, child nutrition, living wage, equal access to healthcare, etc. etc. They, where possible, will be related to the theme of the day and the prayer for peace provided in the worship helps. Steve Bolie will collect and coordinate these and they will be shared with the various presiders of our services as supplemental material for the LHMC worship services.
Steve Bolie, Peace Justice and Poverty Relief Task Force Chair
SAMPLE PEACE MOMENT
First Sunday of Advent 2020
Choose Hope
By Steve Bolie
It was the last day of November 2014, an occasion to marvel and distress at the too quickly passing of the year and my life. I had been retired for a full month already. At the same time, it was the first Sunday of Advent, a day for hope and expectation for the future. The choice was clear: dismay or hope. It’s was a good time to renew my promise to myself to not dwell on negatives from the past. Instead, I vowed to remember good times, times of success, times of good choices and outcomes and look optimistically to the future.
Now, already, it is 2020. Hope is the theme for the first Sunday of advent. Hope for peace has been difficult to maintain this year with isolating and staying home due to the pandemic. The rising numbers of those testing positive and dying from the COVID-19 brings despair not peace. We may have lost relatives and people we know to the virus. For students and teachers alike it has been a year of disruption and uncertainty rather than peace. The future of working from home and worshiping virtually suddenly became the present. Adjustments to the way we live, work, socialize and worship have challenged us at every turn. Disruption and uncertainty stands in way of peace.
One sure thing is that living in hope is more than a human endeavor. As disciples of Jesus Christ we recognize that hope is a divine characteristic that arises from the work of the Holy Spirit. In CCS 398 we sing “hope is a light that shows the way. Light the candle of hope.” Hope lights the way Jesus, the peaceful One. Choose hope.