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The Rev. David Stock, rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, has joined the rotation of ministers who write columns for the Seward Independent. His first column, published on May 14, is especially memorable. Here it is:
“Then God said to Noah… This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”(Genesis 9:12-13: NRSV)
I commute from Omaha to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seward several times per week, usually taking Highway 34. I can be so intent on where I am going or what I have to do, that I can be only vaguely aware of the quiet and vast beauty of the landscape that whips by, the so-called foothills of the “Bohemian Alps.” They say the speed limit is 65, which seems to give license for many to go 75.
But then, one day, traffic ground to a halt … cars inched along, edging gingerly past the scene of an apparent head-on accident that had just happened a few moments before.
Someone was thrown from the car and lying by the side of the road. I pulled my car off to the side a few yards ahead, and for the first time, I stepped out on that road. An eerie stillness whispered through those plains. My tired feet quickened, despite the weight of doubt, and fear, not knowing what I would see, or if I could even do something to help. No sign of emergency vehicles yet. At least I could pray, I thought.
As I stepped beside the others who had gathered, I found myself in a holy circle, bound in words of comfort, and I stretched out my hand to touch a shoulder of the inconsolably injured, saying something like they were surrounded by love. And then I prayed like never before, silently at least, as words I don’t remember poured out of my mouth. I don’t know if what I said or prayed made any difference. All that mattered to any of us was to comfort the injured until the sirens came, the ones whose lives in that instant had turned upside down, and whose family dog was now missing, somewhere in the fields. For there was an unspoken covenant between us and the Spirit of God that surrounded us as an anonymous breeze ... the Holy Spirit that had beckoned us out of our little bubble, vehicles of our own making, to care for those who suffered from those devices.
As it became clear that enough help had arrived, I walked back to the car with feet all the more tired, but with a lighter step, aware for the first time of the ground, the air, the hills … and the gravity that holds it all together. For somewhere in the skies above when the light hits just right, there is a bow of many colors waiting to shine, a covenant bond that God has with us and all creatures, made especially manifest when moments of tragedy strike.
