Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: family

  • The Heart of Prayer (Isaiah 44)

    My first wedding anniversary was spent on a youth retreat. Me in a cabin with the girls, my husband in a cabin with the guys. That’s what it is in the church—the whole thing is woven together with everyone else’s life.

    So when Rachel and Spencer Driver told us this is their first wedding anniversary, I gave them a gift of paper. Because first anniversaries are paper. And because they’re already part of us now, which means their anniversaries get woven in too.

    They’re our new director of student and family ministry. Rachel’s the one we’re paying. Spencer is also dedicated to ministry but—and I want to be clear about this—Rachel is the one we’re paying. They’re moving into the house across the street and they’ve already started showing up in ways big and small.

    And that’s what the church is, isn’t it. People showing up. Committing their lives to something together. Making it matter that we’re here.

    There’s a lot happening right now. There’s always a lot happening. People getting surgery, people recovering, people grieving, people celebrating. That’s the life of a congregation—all of that all at once.

    What holds it together is showing up. Showing up to pray for each other. Showing up to celebrate with each other. Showing up to grieve with each other. Showing up even when it’s inconvenient.

    Rachel and Spencer showed up. Now they’re part of us. And we show up for them too. That’s the deal. That’s how this works.

    Welcome them if you haven’t met them yet. Pray for them. They’re going to need it, because ministry is hard and they’re smart enough to know that. But they’re doing it anyway.

    That’s what I’m holding onto these days. People still saying yes to the hard thing. Still showing up. Still choosing to make their lives matter for something bigger than themselves.

    It’s not much. But it’s everything.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    Leslie Weatherhead wrote a book called The Will of God that I read when I was young, and it saved me. Not spiritually saved, but intellectually—it gave me a framework for holding all the ways my life didn’t look like what I thought God wanted.

    Weatherhead was a preacher who lived through two world wars and the Depression, all the things that make you question what God’s doing. And he came up with three ways to think about God’s will.

    There’s the intentional will of God—what God actually wants for us. What God designs for us. In the creation story, God wants order and goodness and beauty. God’s intention is that none be lost. When Jesus came, God’s intention was for us to follow him, to understand God, to become the kind of people who love the way God loves.

    But we have free will. And we don’t usually do what God intends. We rebel. We choose ourselves. We want what we want and we’re willing to make a mess to get it.

    So here’s the second one: the circumstantial will of God. Given the mess we’ve made—given that we’ve rejected God’s intention—what does God do? Does God just give up? No. God looks at the situation we’ve created and asks, now what? What can I do in these circumstances to move things toward good?

    Here’s the hard part: Jesus’s death wasn’t God’s intention. God’s intention was for Jesus to be followed, to teach us how to live. But we wouldn’t do that. So God said, okay, what can I do with this rejection? How can I redeem this death? And the answer was resurrection. God took our rebellion, took our evil, took our worst act, and turned it into salvation.

    That’s the circumstantial will of God. Not God causing the bad thing, but God refusing to let the bad thing have the last word.

    And then there’s the providential will—the long view. The way God weaves everything together over time. We don’t see that one clearly until we look back. All those things that seemed like disasters, all those detours—they were working toward something. You can’t see it while you’re in it. But you see it later.

    Most of us live our whole lives asking why things happen. Why did my marriage end. Why did I lose the job. Why is my child struggling. And those are real questions. But the answer isn’t always clear, and sometimes there is no good answer. Some things are just evil. Some things are just human stupidity.

    What helps is understanding that God’s working on multiple levels at once. Trying to move us toward the intention while working within the circumstances we’ve created. And trusting that the long view, the providential will, is carrying us somewhere that will make sense.

    Not because everything works out. But because God doesn’t let anything be wasted. Even our rebellion. Even our pain. God’s always looking for the next move toward good.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    I want to talk about my grandmother. She had a condition called tic douloureux—it’s a nerve condition in your face that causes excruciating pain. Not the kind that kills you, just the kind that feels like it’s killing you. She lived with that for thirty years, from her early sixties all the way to ninety.

    And I watched her have these attacks. Just wracked with pain, her face going through it. Finally found a doctor, found some medicine that helped. But one time when I was down at her house, she said something that broke my heart. She wondered what she’d done that God was punishing her for.

    And I said, “No. You know better than that.” Because that’s what we’d been taught. That’s what the world taught us back then. If something’s wrong with you, you did something to deserve it. If you’re sick, it’s your fault.

    Psalm 38 is raw. It’s a person detailing every way they’re falling apart. Arrows have pierced me. Nothing in my body isn’t broken. My wounds reek. It’s graphic. It’s real pain. And woven all through it is this terrible awareness that people think it’s his own fault.

    Those who were near me now stay far away. Those who want me dead lay traps. People muttering lies all day long. So here’s a person who’s devastated physically, and then everyone’s gathering like buzzards, looking for an opening, convinced he brought this on himself.

    We do that, don’t we. When somebody’s down—sick, in crisis, struggling—something in us wants to figure out what they did to get there. Not so we can help. So we can make sure we don’t do it. So we can be safer. And people back away. They stop visiting. They assume the person can’t respond anyway, so why bother. And isolation piles on top of misery.

    But the psalm ends different. Waiting for God. Come quickly and help me. It’s not pretty resolution. It’s just—I’m still here. I’m still reaching. And I’m still waiting for God to show up.

    That’s the thing we miss sometimes. When somebody’s in it, they don’t need our judgment. They need our presence. They need to know that even when they can’t respond, they’re not abandoned. That’s where God is in the middle of this—not as the one punishing, but as the one refusing to leave.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Power of Love

    The Power of Love

    Something shifted for me this week. I was sitting with someone who’s dealing with a genuinely terrible situation. Bad health news. Uncertain future. And instead of offering comfort or advice or theological platitudes, I just sat there. We both just sat there.

    And it hit me that’s what faith is, a lot of the time. Not having answers. Not being able to fix it. Just showing up. Just staying present when everything in you wants to run.

    That’s what the cross is, I think. That’s why Jesus went through with it. Not because he was earning something. Not because God needed payment. But because the only way to show humanity that God is actually committed to us is to die with us. To sit in that worst darkness and say: I’m here too.

    We live in a culture that’s obsessed with fixing everything. Taking control. Managing outcomes. And the cross is the ultimate sign that you can’t. You can’t control suffering. You can’t fix death. You can’t engineer your way to love.

    All you can do is be present. All you can do is choose to love people in their mess instead of waiting for them to clean up their act. All you can do is show up.

    For someone out there, that’s revolutionary. Because you’ve spent your whole life being told you’re not good enough. You have to achieve. You have to perform. You have to become different. And here’s Jesus saying: No. I’m enough. My love is enough. Your presence matters. You matter.

    Just as you are. Especially as you are. All that broken, messy, still-figuring-it-out version of you. That’s the one I came for.

    That’s the gospel. That’s enough.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 62)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 62)

    You ever notice how quickly we move on from hard things? We’re trained for it. Someone goes through something terrible, and after a few weeks we expect them to be back to normal. Back to functioning. Back to acting like everything’s fine.

    I watched someone this week navigate that transition—from crisis to “I guess this is just my life now.” And it struck me how much spiritual work happens in that middle space. Not the dramatic crisis that gets prayers and flowers. But the slow, hard work of deciding whether you’re going to let this break you or change you.

    Scripture’s actually full of people in that space. Waiting. Not getting immediate answers. Just having to decide, day after day, whether they trust God in the middle of the liminal. The in-between.

    I think we’ve missed something as churches. We’re great at crisis ministry. We show up for the emergency. But we’re terrible at the slow, grinding work of transformation. That’s where most of Christian life actually is, though. Not the dramatic moment. The thousands of small moments where you choose faith over despair, humility over bitterness, hope over exhaustion.

    That’s the real witness. That’s the real song. Not when everything’s resolved. But when you’re still standing, still trusting, still showing up to church, and you’re not sure you have any faith left. That’s where God works.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • A Living Hope

    A Living Hope

    New Year’s Eve. Candlelight service. Which is funny because candlelight feels peaceful, right? Contemplative. But I got a call this morning from someone whose husband just had triple bypass surgery. Lying in the hospital on New Year’s Eve. And I’m sitting there holding that phone thinking about peace.

    Here’s the thing about December 31st: we all want to believe next year will be better. Cleaner. We’ll finally get it right. But that’s not really how God works. God doesn’t give us a fresh start by magic. God says: I’ll be with you in the mess. Even the parts you thought you’d escaped.

    I was reading about the old tradition of watching for the New Year at midnight—the whole thing about “year in, year out.” Like time is just this turning wheel and you get to stand at the threshold and imagine something different. But then the phone call this morning reminded me: you don’t get a fresh year. You get a year with your actual life in it. With people you love in hospital beds. With failures from last year still hanging around.

    The real gift—if there is one—is God’s presence in that continuity. Not some magical erasing. Just God saying: I’m here. Still. Again. You don’t have to start clean. You just have to start true.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    Christmas. You know, I’ve never been one to get sentimental about Christmas Eve services—all that soft lighting and nostalgia. But standing here on Christmas morning, listening to our people pray for the sick and the hurting and those facing surgery, I’m struck by something.

    We come to Christmas supposedly knowing the story. Baby Jesus. Angels. The whole bit. But I think we miss something essential, which is that Mary was terrified. She was a young girl with a baby. Joseph was trying to figure out what in the world was happening. There were no midwives, no family, just a barn and animals. And we’ve turned it into a greeting card.

    The real Christmas story starts with people in the middle of chaos asking God to show up. And the thing is—God did. Not with angels cleaning the barn or making everything nice. God showed up in the mess. Vulnerable. As a baby. Depending on a teenage girl and a carpenter.

    I keep thinking about the people we lifted up in prayer this morning. Those facing surgery. Those mourning. Those wondering where God is in the middle of their particular mess. That’s what Christmas actually is. It’s God saying: I know you’re scared. I know you can’t fix this. I’m coming anyway. Not to make it prettier. To be present in it.

    That changes everything.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    So Jesus says we’re like sheep, and he’s the shepherd. And if you know anything about sheep, you know they’re not exactly known for their brainpower. Aggressive sheep are dumb. They run off the cliff or into danger because they don’t have the sense to know better. That’s where the shepherd comes in.

    Here’s what I’ve learned about being human: we’re not that different from those sheep. We think we know what we’re doing. We think we can figure it out on our own, handle it ourselves, make all the right decisions. And then we run straight into something that breaks us. We wander off where we shouldn’t be. We follow the wrong crowd because we’re lonely or scared or tired.

    The good news is that Jesus isn’t mad at you for being a sheep. He’s not disappointed in you for needing help. That’s literally the whole point. He’s there to guide you back when you go astray, to protect you when you’re vulnerable, to feed you when you’re hungry. The only thing you actually have to do is follow. Listen. Stay close. Trust that he knows the way better than you do.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Power of Love (Luke 2027)

    The Power of Love (Luke 2027)

    We hear a lot of talk about people not forgiving, about grudges and bitterness eating people alive. And it’s true—unforgiveness is poison. But I’m struck by how many people carry hurt from things they didn’t even do. They’re paying the price for other people’s evil or carelessness or just plain neglect.

    Sometimes you inherit the damage. A parent’s addiction, an ancestor’s violence, systems that were never built to include you. And people will tell you to just forgive and move on, and I get it—hanging onto that stuff doesn’t help you. But forgiveness without acknowledging what actually happened? That’s not healing, that’s just swallowing it.

    God doesn’t ask you to pretend the hurt didn’t happen. God asks you to trust that God’s stronger than whatever broke you. That God can mend what’s torn apart. And yeah, part of that healing is letting go of the bitterness. But the other part is naming what happened and asking God to make something good out of it. That’s a real forgiveness. That’s the kind that actually saves you.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Matthew 1039)

    The Heart of Prayer (Matthew 1039)

    You know, I got kicked in the head playing kickball at our church’s fifth quarter event. Didn’t think much of it at the time—just a sore head. But by Tuesday it got to me, so I went to the doctor and found out I had a concussion. The medication worked, the headache went away, and life went on. What struck me about people’s response was how they just showed up. They prayed. They cared. That’s what the church is supposed to be doing.

    This week we also blessed some folks who have been training to do disaster response work. You know what that is? It’s showing up when things fall apart. When hurricanes hit or tornadoes touch down or people are hurting in ways that don’t make the news, you go. You help. That takes training, sure, but it starts with just deciding to be the kind of person who shows up.

    I think a lot about what it means to be God’s people in this world. We’ve got good intentions. We’ve got resources. We’ve got communities that care about each other. But good intentions don’t matter if they don’t turn into actual help. They don’t turn into showing up. God doesn’t call us to have the right thoughts—God calls us to do the right thing. Your hands matter. Your presence matters. Your willingness to help, even when it’s messy or hard or costs you something, that’s what transforms the world.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope