Healing Rays of Righteousness

About

My name is Ray Geigley and I am enjoying retirement as pastor and chaplain.  I was ordained a Mennonite pastor in June 1966,  and pastored four different congregations until May 1993.  During this time I graduated from Goshen Biblical Seminary, Goshen, IN, and also completed Clinical Pastoral Education at Philhaven Hospital, Lebanon, PA.

In June, 1993, I began serving as a chaplain and Director of Pastoral Care at Menno Haven Retirement Community, Chambersburg, PA, until retirement in October 2013.  I also served on the Brook Land Board of Directors for 18 years, and as Board Chair for 9 of those years.  Brook Lane is a multi-site facility providing a continuum of both inpatient and outpatient mental health services, and various related educational and training opportunities for the community.

I graduated from Lancaster Mennonite School 1957, and married my classmate, Dorothy Shue, two years later.  We were blessed with 1 son and 3 daughters.  Our son died suddenly at age 23 with a heart attack while playing soccer.  This was a life crisis that dramatically changed our family and my relationship with God and significantly reshaped my pastoral ministry.

It is my hope and prayer that in writing this blog I may in some measure refresh and encourage my readers by sharing from my experiences as a father, pastor and chaplain, those understandings from biblical scriptures that I have found to be helpful in deepening my relationship with Jesus, “the sun of righteousness” – and which continue to lead and nourish me toward a daily healing of mind,  body, spirit, and enables me to sleep well and awake each morning, ready to “go  out and frolic like well-fed calves.”

“Yet, O Lord, You Are Our Father”

Read Isaiah 64:4-9

“But” and “yet” are two three-letter words that turn the tables on any situation, and when read in the Scriptures regarding God, make a significant impact on our relationship with Him.

In these verses, the prophet Isaiah speaks of agony and hopelessness until we come to verse 8.  The first word, “yet” is the most important word in the entire text.  “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.”

This affirmation of faith is made in spite of the fact that there is absolutely no external evidence of any sort to support it.  There is  not one single thing left in the life of this captive people to suggest to them that they could possibly be cared for by a loving God, who loved them like a Father.

The exile itself seemed to demonstrate that either God no longer loved them, or that God no longer had power to protect them.  Either way, for them everything was gone – hopes and dreams were gone, faith was gone.  There is nothing left.  Nothing but that one little “yet.”

And that “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father” brings us full circle back to our own faith.  We are indeed “nothing” as stated in verse 6 – “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”  But we are “nothing” in the hands of the Creator who fashioned an entire universe out of “nothing.”

“Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.  We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”  The glorious truth is that in God’s hands we are never without hope.  It is the skill of the potter alone which can see in a glop of mud the lovely creation which will emerge when that mud is  worked upon the wheel.

It is only the love of God that can take the deepest darkness and despair that life can throw at us, and use it to re-mold and re-shape our lives into new creations – with new life and new possibilities.

The Lenten journey is a walk of faith in the midst of much agony and hopelessness, for the great triumph of Jesus’ resurrection emerges out of the “nothingness” of the cross.

On Good Friday, the hopes of Jesus’ followers  were shattered, and their faith turned to ashes.  On the cross, everything was stripped away from Jesus and he was left with a despair that cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Yet, on that cross was our salvation.  On that cross was our new life, abundant and eternal.  God worked in the darkness and the despair to redeem mankind – to save you and me.  God’s love and grace, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, brought us from ashes to life.

In the “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father” is our eternal salvation, our hope for  tomorrow, and our sufficient strength for today.

Thank you Jesus!