Rejoice!

The Liturgical color today is Rose

So even in the midst of Lent we rejoice for Jesus is near.

Friday, I had a memorial service for Mataya, a twenty year old who took her own life.There are many kinds of blindness.

Today's Gospel is all about blindness.

There are many kinds of blindness.

One kind is depression.

Things can become so dark that we cannot see any way ahead of us.

The darkness can become overpowering

Jesus came that we might see and find our way along the road of life.

Mental illnes is a blindness too oftten ignored, and not well enough funded in our society.

Our prisons are filled with the mentally ill. We lock them in, throw away the key and forget about them.

Surely criminal justce reform is long overdue.

Mataya never harmed anyone else, but eventually he surrendered to the intolerable darkness and harmed herself.

She was the grandaughter of the first  couple I married in Hartington Nebraska in 1959.

And so we pray:

God grant rest and peace to Mataya.

And grant release from darkness

to so many who dwell in the darkness of depression.

Amen.