Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: joy

  • 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 (Psalms 6)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalms 6)

    You know that old country song? “I’ve got tears in my ears from lying on my bed crying over you.” That’s what Psalm 6 is. A person wringing out the couch every night, sick and desperate, calling out to God.

    This is one of the penitential psalms—those raw prayers where people are falling apart. The psalmist starts: please Lord, don’t punish me when you’re angry. Don’t discipline me when you’re furious. And all I thought was, yeah, that’s actually good parenting advice. Don’t punish when you’re mad. Because then it’s your anger coming out, not real discipline. It’s just harm. And this person, whoever wrote Psalm 6, they’re already suffering. They don’t need wrath on top of it.

    The thing that struck me is how thoroughly they’re falling apart. Have mercy on me because I’m frail. My bones are shaking. My whole body is completely terrified. We like to think we’re strong, don’t we? We think we’re invincible. But the truth is we’re all frail. Sometimes it just takes getting sick to realize it.

    And here’s what got me—the psalmist is sick, and not only that, but other people are piling on. There’s this blame floating around: if you’re sick, it’s your fault. You sinned, you didn’t pray hard enough, you didn’t believe strongly enough. We knew this back then. Even today you get drifts of it, that spiritual blame. And when you’re already down, people coming at you with that—it just does more damage.

    But then the psalmist says something that stopped me. “But you, Lord.” Just like that. Not “but I hope” or “but I think maybe.” It’s a statement of confidence in the middle of everything falling apart. But you, Lord. How long will this last? Come back to me. Deliver me for the sake of your faithful love. Not because I’ve earned it—the psalmist knows better than that. But because you are faithful. Because you love me.

    That’s the whole thing, isn’t it. When we’re completely undone, that’s when we need to remember God’s steadfast, stubborn love. Not our strength. Not our righteousness. Just God showing up.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 111)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 111)

    I’m thinking about how we use busyness to avoid actually living. You know—staying so occupied with church stuff and family stuff and work stuff that we never actually have to look at anything hard inside ourselves.

    One of the things that’s becoming clearer to me is how many of us learned, way back in childhood, to deal with pain by just… not dealing with it. By moving on. By finding something else to do. And we spiritualize it. “God wants us to be joyful.” “Don’t let sadness control you.” And before you know it, you’re sixty years old and you’ve never actually grieved anything.

    The spiritual work—the real work—is going the other direction. Letting yourself feel what you actually feel. Sitting with anger. Sitting with grief. Sitting with confusion about God. Not because that’s the goal. But because you have to know what’s in there before you can let God heal it.

    I see people do this in churches sometimes, and the reaction is immediate: “Well, that’s worldly psychology.” No. That’s Jesus. Jesus sat with his grief. Jesus felt his anger. Jesus didn’t skip over the hard feelings to get to the resurrection message.

    If you’ve been taught your whole life that emotions are dangerous, that feelings mean you don’t trust God, that a good Christian is a happy one—that’s a lie worth examining. That’s a script worth questioning. Because wholeness isn’t about feeling better. It’s about being honest. It’s about bringing your whole self to God instead of just the acceptable parts.

    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 (Luke 1)

    The Heart of Prayer (Luke 1)

    We’re in Advent now, waiting. Waiting is hard. We’re not patient people. We want what we want and we want it now. But Advent is teaching us that waiting can be holy. That longing for something good, something true, something that really matters—that’s not wasted time.

    Jesus came once, and we know that story. But we’re still waiting for him to come again, to make everything right, to finish the healing work. In the meantime, we get to be his hands and his heart. We get to show people what God’s love looks like while we’re waiting. That’s our work. That’s our calling. And it matters more than you probably know.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    My granddaddy always said, keep your own counsel. Don’t tell your business all over the place. And I lived by that for years without even realizing I had. See, that’s how it works. Nobody has to say it out loud. We just absorb it from the air around us. We pick it up from what people do. From what gets punished. From what gets praised.

    I didn’t know until I was older that I had written this script for myself: don’t ever be wrong. Don’t ever say something incorrect. Because when you say something wrong, people shame you. They correct you. They look at you like you’re stupid. So I decided to just not talk.

    We all have these scripts. Your mama always told you something. Your granddaddy said something. And maybe it was good advice. Maybe it was broken advice. But it’s running in your head now, telling you who you are and how you should be. The thing is, Jesus looks at all of that and says, who is my mother? Who are my brothers? He’s saying that living God’s way matters more than living by the rules we inherited. More than staying silent. More than being perfect. Your story starts here. In God. In what God wants for you. Not in what your family decided.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope