Weaving a Covering

Sermon

oops

It’s the never ending battle of nearly every married couple.

You go to sleep with covers, wake up without them

I’ve perfected the art of stealing them back without waking Monica up,

I also have a backup blanket on the floor nearby.

Covers matter. They help us rest, feel secure, there’s peace in the weight of a blanket.

There are different kinds of covering in our lives

Your home is a covering.

I remember having my eyes opened during a service project under the burnside bridge many years back. The staff sharing the insight that one of the key struggles for the homeless was sleep.

Consider the blessing of being able to lay down without fear because you have a locked door.

That you have a place to recover when you are sick or injured.

Ugh

Aha

Whee

He prayed that when the nation failed in it’s calling, when they sinned, when it cost them their covering, that God would hear their cry and respond.

God speaks to Solomon

2 Chronicles 7:12-14 “Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple of sacrifice. If I shut the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on my people, and my people, who bear my name...

Let’s pause there.

It is important biblical principle, that when we are drawing on these moments in Israel’s history, we can’t make a 1 for 1 jump to direct application to our lives, our nation, etc.

This passage we are looking at now is not one we can just use for the United States of any specific nation…there is no nation that is “God’s people” the way Israel was and is.

But. There is a “nation” who are his people, who bear his name. And that’s the church.

And just like it was on the nation of Israel to respond to a loss of covering, it is ours today, and so this passage offers us powerful directives in our role as a covering for our community.

Here are three ways we are called to be the covering for our community.

We Cover

In Prayer

My good friend Dennis Fuqua loves to say, “we have to do more than pray, but we can’t do more than pray until we’ve prayed”

2 Chronicles 7:14 “and my people, who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face...”

With our Lives

Being His Hands

Yeah