Happy Father’s Day
The first Father’s Day celebration took place on 19 June 1910 at the YMCA in Spokane, Washington, USA, when Sonora Smart Dodd wished to acknowledge her father, William Jackson Smart, an American civil war veteran and single parent, who raised six children.
What a wonderful privilege it is for me to share with you this morning.
I give thanks to God for your grace and your hospitality. I have had the privilege of visiting with you several times and experienced the warmth of your welcome. I have seen too your works of love and justice and I pray that your ministries will grow.
We live in a world and times where our own pain and the enormity and regularity of the pain of others can overwhelm us. It is very easy to be numbed, to stop noticing, to stop being bothered. In a world where most of us encounter homeless and the helpless people every day, it is easy to be insensitive, if not oblivious to the obvious pain in our midst. In a world where so many of us are wounded, it is oh so difficult to be wounded healers. But we have to be “kinder than necessary because everyone we meet is fighting some kind of battle.”
It is my prayer that this community will continue to be emissaries of love in the lives of the people who are battered and bruised by systems of this world. We are all called to confer dignity on every life — all life, no matter what form it may take. All lives are sacred, and we are to hold them as such. May this community be agents of healing in this city and beyond. As William Blake puts it:
“… we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
May it be so.
Peace, Siphiwe Ndlovu
(Our Guest Preacher for this Sunday)
