"The Spirit Sends Us Forth to Serve"

This is the text of a hymn we used on September 11 at St. Paul's Chapel. I held on to my bulletin for the text. It was written by Delores Dufner, OSB.

1. The spirit sends us forth to serve; we go in Jesus' name to bring glad tidings to the poor, God's favor to proclaim.
2. We go to comfort those who mourn and set the burdened free: where hope is dim, to share a dream and help the blind to see.
3. We go to be the hands of Christ, to scatter joy like seed and all our days, to cherish life, to do the loving deed.
4. Then let us go to serve in peace, the Gospel to proclaim. God's Spirit has empowered us; we go in Jesus' name. 


I'm not sure what about it I liked so much, but I think the evangelism aspect of it; we go to serve but not just serve but to bring glad tidings and to work. "Sharing a dream"means (to me) talking about what the dream is.

On This Day...

I love the new Facebook feature that gives statuses or comments from the date years ago.  Here's a status update from 2010. 


"I don't want you tinkering with me spiritually if you don't know your stuff! I mean, would you let someone operate on you because they FELT like they could?" -Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson


Another version that gets to the same point (wasn't a status but by the same person): "When it comes to someone operating on my mother, I don't want a surgeon who is sincere but dumb. In a similiar fashion, intellectual laziness among the clergy is a profound disservice to the church."