Carmel Valley Community Chapel

THE GOOD WORD – April 2024
As we enter the season of Easter and celebrate the new life that is bursting forth at
this springtime of the year, I want to share with you a prayer by the late Ted Loder, a
Methodist minister and author:
Be with Me in My Unfolding
It is spring, God, and the land is coming up green again,
unfolding outside my well-drawn boundaries
and urgent schedules.and there is the mystery
and the smell of it..The willows are dripping honey color into the rivers,
and the mother birds are busy in manger nests, and I am learning again
that “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”
O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.. Be with me in my unfolding.
It is spring, God, and my blood runs warm with the song of the sap,
longing for a beauty I would become.
And there is the mystery and the smile of it.
The buds are swelling on the bush, the sun is beginning to coax the color
from where it’s been curled against the cold, he air is sweet to the nostrils;
even the city seems to be rubbing its eyes from a long sleep.

And there is a promise in the season I know no name for
except life.. O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.
Be with me in my longing.. It is spring, God,
and something stirs in me reaching, stretching,
groping for words, peeking through my defenses,
beckoning in my laughter, riding on past my fears,
pulsing in my music.. And there is the mystery
and the smile of it.. Be with me in my reaching
so I will touch or be touched, this time,
by a grace, a warmth, a light, o unfold my life to a new beginning,
a fresh budding, a spring within as well as around me.
O God, you have sketched the lines of spring.. Be with me in my reaching.
--Ted Loder, GUERRILLAS OF GRACE
Blessings to you in this springtime of the soul!
Your partner in our shared ministry,
Rev. Rick Yramategu