Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: forgiveness

  • 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 Power of Love

    The Power of Love

    Christ has conquered death. He lived life fully and showed us how to do the same. He suffered like we suffer, resisted temptation like we resist it, loved like we’re called to love. And then he died. And then he rose.

    And that changes everything.

    Not because we get a free pass now. Not because our lives suddenly get easy. But because death isn’t the last word anymore. Because evil isn’t the final answer. Because God’s faithfulness is deeper and stronger than everything that wants to crush us.

    This is the promise of Easter. Not that we won’t suffer. Jesus suffered. But that suffering doesn’t have the power to destroy what matters. That love is stronger than death. That faithfulness lasts beyond the grave.

    When you’re facing something hard—when you’re sick, when you’re grieving, when you’re facing loss—you need that promise. You need to know that this isn’t all there is. That God hasn’t abandoned you. That even in the darkest part, even in death itself, God’s love is at work.

    And here’s the thing: Jesus showed us that. He didn’t explain it from a distance. He came and lived it and died it and rose from it. He met us in the place where we’re most afraid. And he came out the other side.

    That’s the hope we cling to. Not everything working out fine. But God being faithful through everything. That’s enough. That has to be enough, because anything less wouldn’t be real hope. It would just be wishful thinking.

    Easter is fifty days long in the church calendar. We don’t pack it up and leave. We keep asking what it means that Christ rose. We keep letting it change how we live. Because if death doesn’t have the last word, then how we live right now actually matters.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 32)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 32)

    We are here for God. Not the other way around.

    That’s a line from one of our anthems, and it caught me this week. Because most of us have it backwards. We come to church, we come to God, and we’re really thinking about what we need. What we want. What we hope God will do for us. And we turn our lives upside down in the process.

    We forget sometimes that we exist for God. That the whole thing works because God made us for a purpose beyond ourselves. You’d think that would be depressing, right? But it’s actually the most freeing thing there is.

    When you understand that you’re here for God—not that God’s here to fix your life like some cosmic customer service—everything shifts. The things that seem like the biggest problems don’t control you the same way. The disappointments don’t hit the same. Because you’re anchored to something bigger than your comfort or your success or even your happiness.

    And the crazy thing is, when you quit demanding that God make you happy, you actually become happier. Because you start noticing what’s actually good. You start being a blessing instead of always looking for one. You start giving instead of keeping score.

    That’s what it means to be blessed—not getting what you want, but understanding that you’ve been given something worth more than that. Understanding that you have something to give. And starting to give it.

    We are here for God. Let that sink in. Not here for what we can get. Here because we belong to something sacred. Here because we have work to do. Real work. The kind that lasts.

    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 Heart of Prayer (Psalm 50)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 50)

    There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to be a good person all the time. From believing that spiritual maturity means having it mostly figured out. From thinking that following Jesus means becoming less flawed, less angry, less human.

    I’ve been noticing how many of our best people are burning out. And it’s not usually because they’re doing too much. It’s because they’re splitting themselves in half. Public self and private self. Spiritual self and emotional self. The person at church and the person at home.

    What if wholeness actually requires integration? What if the real spiritual work is not becoming a better version of yourself, but becoming more honestly yourself?

    I think about Jesus flipping tables in the temple. Jesus getting annoyed at the disciples for being dense. Jesus not always being calm and understanding. We’ve created this version of Jesus that’s never actually frustrated, never actually angry, never actually human. And then we try to be like that impossible version.

    But the real Jesus—the one in Scripture—is fully present in his anger, in his grief, in his exhaustion. He doesn’t transcend his humanity. He sanctifies it. He shows us that being human is not the problem. Being dishonest about your humanity—that’s where we get stuck.

    So what if spiritual maturity looked like this: More honesty. Less performance. More integration of your actual life. Less splitting yourself into acceptable and unacceptable parts. More bringing your whole self to church, to your relationships, to your prayers.

    That would be revolutionary. And a lot less exhausting.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 139)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 139)

    I’ve been thinking about the word “sing” this week. You know, not in the surface way—like, “we should all feel better if we sing.” But the deeper thing. What it means to raise your voice when things don’t feel worth singing about.

    There’s a passage I keep coming back to, about singing in dark places. Not singing to make the darkness go away. But singing anyway. And I think that’s the real discipline of faith. Not having good feelings. Not figuring it out. But choosing to raise your voice—to the church, to God, to yourself—when the natural thing is to stay silent.

    We have people in this congregation right now who are in genuine pain. Surgery. Loss. Family stuff that’s messier than anyone wants to admit. And the church’s first instinct is usually to fix it or comfort it. But what if the real gift is permission to sing the lament? To say—without sugarcoating—”This is hard. This is real. And I’m going to say that out loud anyway.”

    That takes more faith than the cheerful singing, honestly. Because you’re not pretending. You’re just taking your actual life and offering it to God and saying: I’m still here. I’m still trusting. Even when it sounds more like a cry than a song.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Gift of Forgiveness (Jeremiah 31)

    The Gift of Forgiveness (Jeremiah 31)

    January. Post-holiday collapse. Which is when I’m most likely to sit down and actually think about something beyond logistics and Christmas decorations.

    I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions, and you know what? They’re mostly about becoming someone different. Better. Less flawed. We want to be the version of ourselves we’d actually be okay with. And there’s something true in that. God does call us to transformation. But we’ve got it backwards somehow.

    We think transformation means becoming someone else. Becoming someone who wouldn’t struggle with the same stuff. Someone who’d already have it figured out. But Scripture keeps pointing to something different. It’s not about becoming a different person. It’s about following Jesus more truly in the body you’re actually in.

    That sounds smaller than we want. But I think it’s bigger. Because it means you don’t have to escape yourself to be redeemed. You just have to start saying yes to God in the middle of who you actually are. With your actual failures and your actual patterns and your actual mess.

    That’s the good news nobody wants to hear on January 7th. You don’t get to start over. You get to start here. True. And somehow that’s actually more hope than the fantasy version we keep reaching for.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    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

    I’m always struck by how the Christmas story shows up in the middle of the night. Kings and shepherds, stars and angels, all the most important things happening while most people are asleep. Which tells me that God doesn’t wait for convenient times to show up. God shows up when it matters, when we need it most, whether we’re ready or not.

    That’s good news if you feel like you’re not ready. If you’re not prepared enough or good enough or together enough to deserve God’s attention. God’s not waiting for you to get your life perfect. God’s coming in the middle of the night, in the middle of your mess, to tell you that you’re loved anyway. That’s the whole point.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope