Community has been something on my mind since college. I was part of a campus Christian group and a church that were very focused on it, and I feel like that was a good thing for me to figure out what I wanted in a parish after I graduated. I got married in seminary, went on Internship with my former husband, and then was a pastor’s wife through three parishes. The parishes all had their positive and negative points, and I feel like they each taught me something.
St. Paul’s seems to have the best qualities of all of those parishes. We jump in to help each other out in time of crisis, we all genuinely *LIKE* spending time with each other, and we are trying to make an effort to be engaged with the community. I had been thinking about doing last fall’s Advent devotional book on community, but I had to put those plans by the wayside. As I was thinking more about it in December, I realized that there are multiple aspects of community that could be explored, so our writing prompt turned into a “choose your own adventure” type of thing.
The plan became…
| February 22-25 | Fasting/Prayer/Alms |
| February 26 – March 4 | Temptation |
| March 5-11 | Love |
| March 12-18 | Shame |
| March 19-25 | Disability/Healing |
| March 26 – April 1 | Mourning |
| April 2-8 (Holy Week) | Leadership |
Each week has seven days based on the same passage with the exception of the first week (only four days) and Holy Week which has a different passage every day.
The name of this devotional book comes from the name of the tune that is used for the hymn ”Brethren We Have Met Together”. It is a shape-note hymn from the 19th century that implores the “brethren” and “sisters” to pray for and support each other. Every verse ends with a phrase like “holy manna scattered all around”. It has been stuck in my head the whole time I have been working on this devotional book, so I thought it was fitting to make it the title.
As always, we have a YouTube playlist of music that goes along with this devotional book. You can find it here.
Finally, this devotional book is dedicated to the memories of Dottie Evans and Charlotte Burnham, two special women who passed away this winter. Dottie was one of the first two people to welcome me to St. Paul’s when I walked in the door in June 2016, and she was my cheerleader for everything. Charlotte was one of our Zoom parishioners, and I am incredibly grateful that she offered to be one of my devotion writers for this book. Both of them will very much be missed.
Blessings to you this Lent!
-Jen McCabe