Dear friend, sisters and brothers in faith.
Thank you so much for opening up your embrace for us, Kór Lágafellskirkju, our spouses and friends and welcoming us into your society. The world shrinks, becomes less big, when you make friends over borders, over the see. The world becomes more safe, more trustworthy when we connect to each other, when we meet, talk and worship. And that is what we need to do to day – build relationships. That is a human need through all ages.
In Alexandria, here in Minnesota, I read this quotation in their museum:
“A small group of people traveled from Germany, their homeland. They bought land, built homes and farms and came together to worship”
This people might as well have been islanders. They fullfilled their primal needs of security and survival – but as humans they came together to communicate, build a society, to give life a meaning and through and around it all they connected to God in prayer, in their worship. We choosed to move our service, 17th of june – Hátíðarguðsþjónustu – over-sees and celebrate life and bring thanks to God together with you. To day we are called together by God. He is always there in advance. Our premisses are different from those of our ancestors in the past – but our common ground is the same – our nationality and our faith in Jesus Krist.
To day we are celebrating our nationality, our independance as a nation, our democracy and all the cultural and social values that stik to that.
What makes a nation?
The people.
But there is more to it. What makes a nation is the people, their language (ability to connect and communicate with each other) their land, stories and their values. A nation is formed by interconnections and communications with the enviroment, other nations – their neighbors of the world. It is a living organism, never static or an isolated island. We islanders of to day come from a country were the economic system of free market has collapsed with deverstating consequenses for the whole nation – which we are not jet fully aware of .
We are a nation – to day disappointed, we have more or less lost our trust in our leaders, some feel shame, all and everyone search for hope and meaning.
In the last 10 days, we our group, have been on a journey, been traveling, brought over the ocean by aircraft to countries where our brothers and sisters from Iceland immigrated to and setteled. You and before some of you, your ancestors for over 100 years ago. Like they did in the past, we have traveled over the see out of hope. In stead of creeping into fear and doubt, we choose to follow our longing to connect, to sing, to continue to build a bridge to the future in hope and on grounds that are our common.
What connects us is our stories, individual stories, that merge into the storie of a nation.
What connects us is our faith in God, in Jesus Krist, our values, our longing for freedom and justice, our longing for love and to be loved. These are the true values of life and in them we are prosperous and by standing up for those values we gain life and joy. We gain trust in the time to come – in the future.
In a bookstore in Winnepeg, selling used books, i found this wonderful book called “Granddad’s prayer of the earth” by an author with the name Douglas Wood. It tells a story about a boy and his grandfather, about their relationship. But more – it tells the story of God, of prayer, of life.
It begins by these words:
“When I was little, my granddad was my best friend. Being with him always made the world seem just right”
With beautiful poetic illustration this book takes you through a landscape in the nature.
The two, the boy and the granfather used to go together in the wood. While they are walking together the young boy askes his granddad questions about things he was not sure of – starting:
“Why is it…?”
“What if..?”
“Does it ever…?”
One day he asked him about prayer.
In his answere granddad draws the little boys attention to different things in the nature and connects them to praying and to God so the nature becomes enlighted with the spirit of love.
“Did you know boy” he wispered “that trees pray?
See how they reach for the sky” he said.
“They reach and reach for clouds and sun and moon and stars. And what else is reaching for heaven but a prayer?”
And he continues
“Rocks pray too” “pebbles and boulders and old wethered hills. They are still and silent and those are two important ways to pray”
As they walked further they came to a stream.
“Do stream prey, too” the boy asked and granddad told how “Sometimes waters pray with laughter, chuckling to their friends the rocks, and sometimes they pray by dancing, leaping into the air and falling back again.”
“Yeah! – and how the grass prays, how the wind prays as it wispers and moans and sighs. It is saying a prayer and singing a hymn at the same time”
“ All beings of the world pray”said Granddad
“Each living thing gives it´s life to the beauty of all life and that gift is a prayer. People pray some of the most wonderful prayer of all” He said.
In the end granddad tells his grandson all the different ways of how people pray.
“Smelling a flower”
“Watching the sunrise”
“Saying hello to a new day is one of the oldest prayer “.
“Making music, painting a picture.”
“Holding hands around the table with family and friends, remembering all that holds us together and giving thanks, is one of the greatest prayers.”
These last words of the grandfather – by just taking them to our heart – they remind us of the meaning, purpose of telling stories, to learn and remember the stories of our past, of our people and to pass them on to future generation.
That is our greatest prayer
“Ask and it will be given to you”
Our prayer is to give forth what we have received – hope for the future, for our life, country, the world. Hope ecoed from past through present time, affirmed in this very moment, in our worship to God.
May our loving God strengthen us in our faith. Amen
