Sharing God's Love and Grace

Consider the Lilies

Meditation on Matthew 6:25-34 for the Women’s Retreat

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

Feb. 28, 2026

I think I have been an anxious person my entire life. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t anxious.

My parents have told me that I was anxious even as a baby. They could feel the tension in my body when they held me as an infant. I have always liked my bath, however, so you can see that I am a happy, contented baby in my father’s arms in this photo. I know that I am not alone.

That many people struggle with anxiety and may have for a long time. The National Institute of Mental Health[1] says that 31.1% of adults in the U.S. will experience an anxiety disorder at some time in their lives. In the past year, about 23.4% of women and 14.3% of men have suffered with anxiety. It’s more common in women than in men. What’s interesting about this chart, is that it reveals that fewer people older than 60 experience anxiety than those younger than 60. So maybe we become less anxious as we get older? That’s good news, isn’t it?

When I was in seminary, studying for ministry, I was surrounded by anxious, type-A, perfectionistic personalities. It was exhausting trying to keep up with them! So I know that I am not alone as a pastor with my struggle with anxiety. It almost seems to go along with a call to ministry. Pastors seem to be worried about something all the time. And yet, at the same time, we have a great faith that God will be with us and strengthen us through all the difficult circumstances of our lives.

It’s not just pastors who worry, of course. If I were to ask for a show of hands in this room, asking who has ever struggled with anxiety, even for a time in their life—and I won’t do that—I would imagine quite a few people would raise their hands.

Many people in the Bible struggled with anxiety. Jonah, hearing a call to go to Ninevah and preach to people he didn’t like, turned and went the opposite way.

Abraham was anxious all the time, slide waiting for so many years for the fulfillment of the promise to be father of many nations, when he and his wife, Sarai, didn’t even have one child.

Jacob was anxious, running from his brother, Esau, who wanted to kill him. I would be anxious, too!

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul was anxious about all the churches he planted and anxious for them—that’s why he wrote so many letters, I think.

He couldn’t stop worrying about them and trying to help them overcome their problems. When he was writing to the Philippians, while he was in jail, not expecting to see them again, I think he was writing as much to encourage them as to encourage himself, when he says,

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Isn’t that a wonderful passage?

You see, you can know that being anxious is the wrong thing to do, that it isn’t something God wants us to do, but, at the same time, not be able to stop being anxious.

Some biblical passages have helped me accept myself, anxiety and all. I know that I am loved unconditionally by a God who knows us completely. The writer of Psalm 139 says,

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

The psalmist also says,

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵    My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.

It comforts me to know that the Lord is able to use all our personality traits and the experiences of our lives to serve God and our neighbors, too. We don’t always like our personality traits. But it is difficult to change some things that are so ingrained in our DNA, it seems. I think I inherited my anxious tendencies from my father. And sadly, I think I may have passed on my anxious tendences to my children.

I have to trust that God has a plan, despite the anxious tendencies, and that maybe the things we don’t like about ourselves are gifts from God that help us in our labor for him.

Scholars have opinions about whether Jesus was anxious or not. What do you think? Was Jesus anxious? Most would say he didn’t have a personal tendency toward anxiety or depression, even though he was as human as you and me and experienced every feeling that we have ever had in his human life on earth.

He knew that his days were numbered and that his ministry would lead to persecution and suffering and end at the cross. He must have felt the pressure to whip his disciples into shape, prepare them for their ministry when he was no longer with them. He was often scolding them for their lack of faith and urging them to pray.

And yet, he still experienced joy and peace, especially when he was out in nature and teaching and healing the crowds that followed him, as he was in today’s passage which is part of the Sermon on the Mount.

N.T. Wright says, “Has it ever struck you what a basically happy person Jesus was? Oh, yes, we know that he was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. We know that the darkness and sadness of the world descended on him as he went to the cross. The scene in Gethsemane, where he is wrestling with his Father’s will, and in agony wondering if he’s come the right way, is one of the most harrowing stories ever told. We know that he wept at the tomb of Lazarus, and that he was sad when people refused to trust God and see the wonderful things he was doing.”[1]

But these are exceptions. “As we read a passage like this, we should see that it flows straight out of Jesus’ own experience of life. He had watched the birds wheeling around, high over the Galilean hills, simply enjoying being alive. He had figured out that they never seemed to do the sort of work that humans did, and yet they mostly stayed alive and well.”[2]

Jesus mentions quite a few birds by name, and, in Luke 12:24, as they are here in the Sermon on the Mount, they are an example of the Father’s care for God’s children, even more so than the wild creatures that God loves and provides for. Jesus says in Luke, not just consider the birds, but “consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!”

In Matthew 10:29-31, he will reaffirm our value and God’s intimate knowledge of our circumstances and our very own beings when he asks his followers, who are struggling with fear,“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. ³¹So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

I like this quote from Randy Alcorn, “God loves people more than animals, but He does love animals, and if no one else sees a sparrow fall and cares, He does.“

In Matthew 23:37, Jesus will liken himself to a mother hen, longing to gather his chicks to himself. This is the same image of God that he would have known from Psalm 91:4, “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and defense.”

He would have known the image of God’s promise to His people, discouraged and brokenhearted when they are in Babylonian exile, in Isaiah 40:31, “But they that wait upon the Lord, will rise up on wings as eagles, they will run and not be exhausted, they will walk and not faint.”

Along with the many birds in Jesus’ world, he would have seen many flowers, some of them native, growing in Galilean soil. Think about it. His ministry was mostly done outside in nature, where there would be room for the crowds to gather. I really like this icon of Jesus with the lilies and the sparrow in the right-hand corner.

Here are some of the native flowers he and his disciples would have seen. [1]

This is chamomile. “A member of the daisy family, the yellow and white flowers of the dog chamomile stretch wide in the morning light and turn down in the evening. Found in the deserts of Israel, these annuals are 8 inches (20 cm) tall.”

The word translated “lily” includes several different plants. Here is an actual lily. “Growing to 3 or more feet (1 m) from the bulb, lilies do not stand erect but point horizontally. The large white blooms live four to five days. Lilies are pollinated by moths which are attracted to its sweet fragrance and its white color. References to ‘lilies’ in English Bibles should be seen as a generic term for flowers, rather than as a referring to this particular variety. This exquisite flower was known in biblical times and was used as an architectural motif for capitals and in Solomon’s temple.”[2]

This is a crown daisy, “Abundant and bright, the golden hue of the crown daisy is reflected in its scientific name chrysanthemum coronarium which means ‘golden flower.’ The crown daisy is able to grow in difficult areas. The flower measures 15 to 30 inches (40–80 cm).”[3]

Here is a poppy. “Blooming in May, the beautiful poppy lives two to three days. The brief life of the poppy provides a perfect example of the flower that fades in contrast to the Word of God which stands forever (Isa 40:5-9; 1 Pet 1:24-25). This annual grows 12 to 20 inches (30–50 cm) in height. The plant has large leaves and many stems, each with a flower. The red flowers have four petals which open in the morning and close for the evening.”[4]

Here is the beautiful autumn crocus. “The autumn crocus (סתוונית היורה) is the first flower to emerge from the ground during the rainy season in Israel. Only the bloom is visible above ground, and its tulip-like leaves appear in the spring.”[5] These flowers bloom across Israel from October through December.

Here is the anemone. “Green hills adorned with thousands of crown anemones announce spring’s arrival. The flower blooms from December to April. Although blue, white, purple, and pink anemones exist, red is by far the most common. The anemone typically has six petals which close in the evening and reopen with the morning light. Traditionally, these are the lilies of field to which Jesus compares Solomon in all his glory (Matt 6:28, Luke 12:27).”[6]

So, once again, I ask, was Jesus plagued by anxiety like some of the rest of us?

Wright insists that he was not. “Jesus had a strong, lively sense of the goodness of his father,” he says, “the creator of the world…When he told his followers not to worry about tomorrow, we must assume that he led them by example. He wasn’t always looking ahead anxiously, making the present moment count only because of what might come next. No: he seems to have had the skill of living totally in the present, giving attention totally to the present task, celebrating the goodness of God here and now.”[7]

“If that’s not a recipe for happiness,” Wright goes on, “I don’t know what is. And he wanted his followers to be the same.” He is speaking of a God who is not distant from this world, “who doesn’t care about beauty and life and food and clothes. He is talking about the creator himself, who has filled the world with wonderful and mysterious things, full of beauty and energy and excitement, and who wants his human creatures above all to trust him and love him and receive their own beauty, energy, and excitement from him.”[8]

“So when Jesus tells us not to worry about what to eat, or drink, or wear, he doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. …Far from it! Jesus likes a party as much as anyone, and when he died the soldiers so admired his tunic that they threw dice for it rather than tearing it up. But the point was again priorities. Put the world first, and you’ll find it gets moth eaten in your hands. Put God first, and you’ll get the world thrown in.”[9]

“Of course, because we live in a world filled with anxiety, it’s easy to let it rub off on us.”[10]

“Living totally without worry sounds, to many people, as impossible as living totally without breathing.”[11] But to some extent, worrying is something we have learned to do. And some of us like to do it!

“Some people are so hooked on worry,” Wright says, “that if they haven’t got anything to worry about they worry that they’ve forgotten something.”[12]

Oh, no! I think he’s talking about me. Is he talking about you?

Will you pray with me?

Loving God, who created the world, with its flowers and birds and animals, and human beings, too, thank you for your love and tender care of us. Forgive us for our seemingly endless worrying. Thank you for loving us and using us to build your kingdom, with our weaknesses, and for your power to make something good out of something we don’t like about ourselves. Help us to see ourselves as you see us, as your precious redeemed children. Help us to live in the present, especially today at our retreat, and cast our cares onto your Son, who tells us, “Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Amen.

[1] “Any Anxiety Disorder,” National Institute of Mental Health, accessed Feb. 26, 2026, at https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder

[1] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone Part 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 65.

[2] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 65.

[3]“Flowers of the Field,” BiblePlaces.com, accessed Feb. 26, 2026, at https://www.bibleplaces.com/flowers-of-the-field/

[4] “Flowers of the Field” at https://www.bibleplaces.com/flowers-of-the-field/

[5]“Flowers of the Field” at https://www.bibleplaces.com/flowers-of-the-field/

[6] “Flowers of the Field” at https://www.bibleplaces.com/flowers-of-the-field/

[7] “Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel,” accessed Feb. 6, 2026, at https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1638730349511295&set=a.474091621412994

[8]“Flowers of the Field” at https://www.bibleplaces.com/flowers-of-the-field/

[9] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 65-66.

[10] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 66.

[11] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 66.

[12]N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 67.

[13]N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 67.

[14]N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 67.

Joseph and His Brothers

Meditation on Genesis 37:1-11 for First Sunday in Lent

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Dr. Karen E. Crawford

Feb. 22, 2026

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Did anyone get out for a walk? If I didn’t know better, I might think that spring is right around the corner. I heard the cardinals singing, “Cheer, cheer, cheer,” and the tufted titmice scolding, as if I had come too close to a nest. Would you believe that the daffodils are coming up from the ground, under the snow?

But on the way back from my walk, dark clouds were rolling in. A chill was in the air. The weather was about to change.

And this is how it is with the beginning of the Joseph story.

All is well with the 17-year-old favored son, the handsome one, who probably had his mother’s good looks. He is wearing the coat of many colors, the tunic with luxurious long sleeves that his father made for him! He didn’t make one for his other 11 sons.

The Joseph story extends from Genesis 37 to 50 and is the only one in the Bible considered a “novella.” It stands well on its own, and with the dramatic ups and downs and twists and turns of the plot, and well-developed characters, the Joseph story may be one of the best-known Old Testament stories in America.

It helps that the Joseph story was the one a 17-year-old Andrew Lloyd Weber chose to tell in the 1960s when he was commissioned by a prep school in London to write a Bible story set to pop music that the whole school could perform, no matter their musical ability. A 20-year-old Tim Rice offered his services as a songwriter.

The very first performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat took place on March 1, 1968, to an audience of 200 parents. Short and sweet at only 22 minutes, the show was embraced by the school, especially because of Rice’s clever lyrics alongside an Elvis-inspired performance of Pharaoh. Lloyd Weber and Rice brought Joseph to the stage again two months later at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster; the audience was 10 times the size of the first. Amateur stage productions came to the U.S. in 1970. Joseph’s professional debut wasn’t until 1972 in Edinburgh. The Bible story was brought to the West End of London in 1973 with Gary Bond in the starring role. Joseph came to Broadway in 1982. Did anyone see it on Broadway?

The thing is the musical didn’t tell the whole story. There’s so much more to know about Joseph and how the Lord was able to use what human beings intended for evil as something good for many people. Joseph’s suffering and pain led to the saving of many lives, including his own family. But it took many years for the story to unfold.

My hope for this series is that you would come to know Joseph more and connect with his, and his family’s story in your life. May we all grow closer to the God whom Joseph knew, and may we find help and hope for the pain and brokenness in relationships that we human beings struggle with today. For Joseph’s is a story of love and hate, lies and deceit, grief and loss, hunger and famine, hope and despair, good and evil, birth and death, life and resurrection, forgiveness and reconciliation.

To understand who Joseph really was, you have to know something about his family history. Anyone here working on their family genealogy? My father spent decades researching our family tree. I think it helped him to know his parents and extended family better and his role, how he fit, in the family story. I think it made him feel more connected to a wider community, as my mom and dad, as he worked on the genealogy, used to travel around the world to meet newly discovered relatives, share stories, and swap family photos.

I would like to share some of Joseph’s family tree so you can see how he fits into his family and what role he plays in the family story. In Joseph’s time and culture, family was even more important than it is today. It was common for blood relatives to marry each other.

Joseph’s family was no exception. Joseph is the first child of Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, who was a relative of Jacob’s mother. Rachel’s father, Laban, was also Jacob’s uncle—his mother, Rebekah’s younger brother. Yes, Jacob and Rachel were first cousins!

Jacob didn’t plan it this way, but he had more than one wife at the same time. He had also married Rachel’s older sister, Leah, by accident. Men, can you imagine having two wives, and they are sisters? Genesis tells us that Jacob met Rachel first, at a well. She was a shepherdess. Her sister, Leah, had “weak eyes,” and Rachel was “shapely and beautiful.” Jacob fell madly in love with Rachel and agreed to serve her father Laban for 7 years, if Laban permitted him to marry Rachel.

Well, Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and “they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” “Then Jacob said to Uncle Laban, ‘Give me my wife, for my time is fulfilled, that I may live with her.’ This is how they got married. Laban gathered all the people of the place and made a feast. When evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to him; and he slept with her, thinking she was Rachel. When morning came, there was Leah! “What have you done to me?” Jacob cried. “I was in your service for Rachel! Why did you deceive me?’”

Laban had a lame sort of answer, saying it wasn’t the custom to give the younger daughter in marriage until the older daughter was married. If Jacob wanted Rachel, he could have her in a week—after the honeymoon with Leah—but he would have to work for his uncle 7 more years, which Jacob did.

But Rachel was barren for a long time, and this made her miserable. A woman’s purpose and worth as a wife was directly related to her bearing children. Leah was not barren. The explanation for Leah’s having many children while Rachel could not was that “The Lord saw that Leah was unloved and he opened her womb.”

Leah gave Jacob six sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. She also gave birth to a daughter, Dinah. This is the only girl in the family. She gave her slave, Zilpah, to Jacob, so she could have more sons through her: Gad and Asher. Rachel’s slave, Bilhah, also gave Jacob two sons: Dan and Naphtali. (By the way, Bilhah and Zilpah were sisters, too.)

God finally “remembers” Rachel in Gen. 30:22-23 and removes her “disgrace.” She gives birth to Joseph. His birth stirs Jacob to decide to take his family back home to his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, who were aging. He had run away years before because he was afraid of his older twin brother, Esau, who had threatened to kill him because Jacob had stolen the father’s birthright. On the journey home to Ephrath, now Bethlehem, and shortly after an angel of the Lord wrestles with Jacob and gives him his new name, ISRAEL, Rachel goes into hard labor. She gives birth to her second son, Benjamin, in Gen. 35, and breathes her last.

So these are the 12 tribes of Israel (Jacob’s sons through Leah and her slave, Zilpah, and Rachel, and her slave, Bilhah): Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun; Gad and Asher; Dan and Naphtali; and Joseph and his younger brother, Benjamin.

And now you know why Jacob loved Joseph so much—not just because he was the child of his old age, but because he was the first son of the love of his life—Rachel, for whom he had waited for 7 years and worked for the deceitful Laban for 14. Rachel, who had died young while giving birth.

Friends, what happens when there is a favorite child in a family? The ones who are not the favorite get angry. They fight. That colorful tunic was like pouring oil on a fire. In Gen. 37:4, “when his brothers saw that their father loved (Joseph) more than any of his brothers, they hated him so much that they could not speak a friendly word to him.”

Joseph also had spiritual gifts the others did not possess. He was like his father, Jacob, who had a dream of angels going up and down a ladder when he was on the run from Esau, which was an assurance that heaven and earth were connected and that God was always with him, wherever he goes.

The Lord gives Joseph two dreams in this passage. Both are a window into the agricultural society in which Joseph lives. The one with the sun, moon, and stars stirs us to imagine Joseph and his brothers out with the flocks by day and night and the one with binding the sheeves of wheat help us imagine the acres of fields of crops that would be harvested, stored, ground, baked, and eaten by the community. Did you notice that Joseph doesn’t interpret his own dreams? But as soon as he tells them to his brothers, they seem to know exactly what they mean—that Joseph, a tattle tale who brings bad reports of them back to their father and who is a mere servant to the sons of the slave sisters, Zilpah and Bilhah—will rise above them all.

And there’s a chill in the air when we read, “And they hated him even more for his dreams and his words.”

His brothers are jealous of Joseph.

But their father can’t stop thinking about what he said.

Let us pray.

Holy One, we read the stories of your people from long ago in Genesis and they seem like they could have happened yesterday. They feel so real to us. Thank you for your Word. Families are still complicated, although maybe not as complicated as Joseph’s. Families still have their struggles with grief and loss, health and death, and with broken dreams and broken relationships. Carry us by your Spirit through this Patriarch’s story, through all the highs and lows, beautiful days and terrible days. Through story, Lord, we ask that you would allow us to hear your voice. Build up our faith in our Lord who still speaks to us and walks with us but seems far away in difficult times. May you bring healing and wholeness during this season of Lent and beyond to whatever might be broken in our families, neighborhoods, and world. Amen.

Jacob/Israel’s family

Isaac’s parents were Abraham and Sarah.

Jacob’s parents were Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob’s twin brother was Esau.

Here are the four mothers of the 12 sons or “tribes” of Israel:

Holy Dust!

Meditation for Ash Wednesday

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Feb. 18, 2026

**Art by Stushie, used with permission**

Yesterday, I was feeling especially grateful and the Lord brought one of my seminary professors to mind. I had seen the announcement of his retirement. But I wondered what became of him. I haven’t seen him since my graduation in spring 2010, when I had an attack of the nerves and Professor Paul Rorem told me to hold my head up high as I accepted my degree. Even as I was finishing an extremely difficult program of study, something in my heart told me that I didn’t deserve the honor.

I didn’t really fit in at Princeton, mainly because I was older than most of the M.Div. students and had had two careers before hearing the call to go to seminary and pursue ordination. But I had Professor Rorem as my Christian history teacher that first semester, and, though it was a huge class of maybe 50 students in a lecture hall, I saw his kindness right away. During our first exam, when we were furiously writing in those little blue books, he read the tension in the room and spoke gently to us, reminding us that God was with us. He said, “You are not alone.”

He made such an impression on me that I signed up for another history class with him the next semester—Women Leaders of the Medieval Church. In June 2021, when he was retiring after nearly 3 decades of teaching, he said of this class and his interest, when most historians and theologians were talking about “dead white men,” “There were dozens of women in the early and medieval church who were clearly leaders, whether preachers, theologians, or authors, whose stories need to be known and lifted up,” he said. “It’s a happy surprise for students when they see how many women were recognized for their writing and influence at that time, and the struggles and barriers that had to be negotiated.”[1]

After finishing his Medieval Women Leaders of the Church and doing a project on Julian of Norwich, I was determined to dig deeper into the 14^th century writings of this anonymous anchoress. Professor Rorem invited me to come and serve as a teaching assistant in his Medieval Women Leaders of the Church in the final semester of my senior year and do an independent study of Julian. I led small groups and presented my findings about the two manuscripts, and I told her story with a lecture and slide presentation.

Professor Rorem saw something in me that I didn’t see. He wrote a recommendation for me to pursue Ph.D. studies, but at the same time, he talked me out of it. I still remember what he said to me that day in the dining hall, where he often met with students, talking about coursework and their future plans. It was a hard conversation when he told me that I had gifts for ministry. And that it would be a loss to the church if I pursued an academic career. Sure, you can get your Ph.D., he said. But it will take at least 5 years and that’s 5 years the church wouldn’t have you. He told me to finish the biblical languages requirement (I needed to take Hebrew) and the ordination exams. He told me to become a solo pastor of a small church, like he did, so that I would have time for writing and study. He said Presbyterians valued an educated clergy. He told me to pursue a Doctor of Ministry degree. I had forgotten that detail!

I didn’t want to hear this at the time. I just wanted to continue my writing, studying, and teaching because that was comfortable for me. I couldn’t imagine serving as a minister in a church. This was even after hearing the call to parish ministry in a life-altering experience as a state park chaplain in the summer of 2007.

Today, on Ash Wednesday, we wear the ash as a sign of our frailty and mortality. God made us from the dust of the earth and someday our bodies will return to the dust. It is a humbling beginning to the Lenten season, which is right where our hearts and minds need to be.

Today, we are reminded of our great need for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

At the same time, we are reminded what our loving and gracious Lord can do with dust infused with God’s own breath. And how surprising resilient dust really is. Anyone who has ever dusted a table full of knickknacks and come back in a few days to find the dust has returned, knows how ever-present dust is in our lives. You can’t get rid of it no matter who hard you to try. So don’t bother dusting; it’s a waste of time. And you know how easily dust can be molded into different shapes, depending on the artist’s hands and the form or mold into which the dust or soil or clay is pressed and held until the work of art is ready. The prophet Isaiah speaks in 64:8, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

The Artist, my friends, is still at work in we who are dust, and won’t stop until we are everything the Lord wants us to be so we can do the labor of Christ’s ministry. As Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, in 1:6, “And being confident of this, He who created or began a good work in you will carry it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ (when Christ returns).” What I am trying to tell you is that we aren’t just ordinary dust to be swept off with a dirty cloth. We are created by God and being recreated in Christ this very moment and till the end of time. We are dust with a sacred purpose and secret ingredient, as we are infused with the power of the Spirit of God. We are Holy Dust.

Paul is speaking with the church about his many trials, suffering, and persecution in his second letter to the Corinthians. His suffering is because of his call to serve Christ and because this conflicts with the cult of the goddess, Diana, in the city of Ephesus. His preaching causes a major economic and religious uproar. Gods made by human hands are idols, Paul says, and this is what the silversmiths are selling—statues of Diana—and making large profits. The apostle writes Second Corinthians in response to brutal verbal attacks by the Corinthians. In short, the church no longer trusts and respects him as their spiritual leader after what happened in Ephesus.

But Paul won’t give up on them. He writes of the need for forgiveness. He says in chapter 4, that we have a “treasure in clay pots, so that the extraordinary quality of the power may belong to God, not to us. We are under all kinds of pressure, but we are not crushed completely; we are at a loss, but not at our wit’s end; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are cast down but not destroyed. We always carry the deadness of Jesus about in the body, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body… revealed in our mortal humanity.” In chapter 5, we find that beautiful assurance, “For we know that if our earthly house, our present tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house no human hands have built: it is everlasting in the heavenly places.” And that “in Christ, we are a new creation. Old things have gone and look, everything has become new.”

Paul, in our passage in chapter 6, lists the qualities that are necessary for the call to Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, qualities such as patience, endurance, kindness, and genuine love, qualities that the Corinthian church is not demonstrating with Paul or one another. And yet, this letter is kept and read in churches for hundreds of years and becomes a part of the canon of our Bible. We can only assume that the Corinthian church, at least some of Christ’s followers there, heard what Paul was saying and had a change of heart, a spiritual transformation.

I am thinking that maybe it is time to write Professor Rorem, whose kindness and encouragement pointed me onto the right path, even though it wasn’t what I thought I wanted at the time. That path brought me here to worship and serve the Lord with you today. I don’t know exactly what I will say in my letter to Professor Rorem, but I know that it’s time to say thank you, especially during this season of Lent, when we are humbled and brought to gratefulness for all that God has done through the suffering and sacrifice of the Son.

Some of you are carrying heavy burdens tonight, burdens that the Lord wants to take from you. Some of you need healing. You may be struggling with grief and loss, with family problems, work problems, or a health diagnosis for yourself or a loved one. Some have other worries distressing you. Some may be struggling with depression. I am here to encourage you, like others have encouraged me, and assure you that your Potter hasn’t forgotten you. God is still with you. You are firmly grasped by the Master’s hands. You are clay being molded into the shape that God will use for God’s own mysterious purposes. The One who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Just wait and see. You are not what you used to be. In Christ, you are a new creation. You, my friend, are Holy Dust.

Let us pray. Holy God, thank you for creating us from the dust and breathing life into us. Thank you for being the Potter who is molding us, your clay, into what you can use for your mysterious purposes. Thank you for your grace and mercy, forgiving us for all our sins, and for holding us safely in the grasp of your loving hand, now and forevermore. Blow your Spirit into us, once more, dear Lord, and lead us to the right paths. Heal and give peace to those who are suffering. Stir us to demonstrate the qualities necessary for followers of your Risen Son, qualities such as patience, endurance, kindness, and genuine love. Amen.

[1] Alumni News, Princeton Theological Seminary, accessed Feb. 18, 2026, at https://ptsem.edu/about/the-quad/news/news-professor-paul-rorem-retires/

The Gospel of Matthew for Lent

Rev. Dr. Karen E. Crawford

In 2010, Tom Wright, New Testament Scholar and the former Bishop of Durham and Lord Spiritual in the UK Parliament, was asked to write a guidebook for “The Big Read.” The ecumenical project in Lent and Eastertide involved encouraging people to read through the gospel of Luke. Wright wrote a little guidebook with his own contemporary translations from the Greek and daily devotions and prayers to help people find their way through the gospel. The book was read by individuals and churches in the UK and used as a study guide by small groups. The “Big Read” was so popular that Wright was asked to write another guidebook, this time for Matthew, as this is the gospel that would be read in worship in Lectionary Year A in 2011.

I bought Wright’s guide, Lent for Everyone: Matthew (Year A), for my own devotional time for Lent this year, but then I thought it would be nice to invite others to join me in this “Big Read” of Matthew, like they did in the UK years ago. I trust that Wright and the Holy Spirit will lead us to discover new treasures in God’s Word, as there’s nothing like reading a gospel straight through, from beginning to end, day by day.

Beginning on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18, 2026), won’t you join me in reading God’s Word and reflecting on, with Tom Wright, what Matthew’s gospel meant in the time in which it was written and such a time as this that we live in today? Check back each day to listen to a new audio clip. (Art by Tracy Henchey, John DiGiacomo, and Stushie)

ASH WEDNESDAY

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026 Matthew 1-2, focused on 1:18-25

Speak to us, Father, in a new way as we read your word. Help us to hear your voice and follow where you lead. Amen.

Thursday, February 19, 2026 Matthew 3, focused on 3:1-12

Gracious Lord, as your heavenly rule extends on earth, help us to know your story and live as your family. Amen.

Friday, February 20, 2026 Matthew 4, focused on 4:18-25

Gracious Lord, help us to be ready when you call us to work with you. Amen.

Saturday, February 21, 2026 Matthew 4, focused on 4:1-11

Lord Jesus, as you saw through the temptations and refused them, give us wisdom to recognize the tempter’s voice, and strength to resist. Amen.

Sunday, February 22, 2026 Psalm 32

Father, help me, this Lent, to confess my sin honestly and to celebrate the new life which you give to those who trust you. Amen.

Monday, February 23, 2026 Matthew 5, focused on 5:1-12

Lord Jesus, help us to hear your voice, to accept your challenge, and to follow you in the way of your kingdom. Amen.

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 Matthew 6; focused on 6:5-15

Lord, teach us to pray; teach us to forgive; make us your people. Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory. Amen.

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 Matthew 7, focused on 7:15-23

Gracious Lord, draw our roots to yourself, the living water, so that we may grow strong and bear good fruit. Amen.

Thursday, February 26, 2026 Matthew 8, focused on 8:23-34

Lord of wind and sea, help us to follow you, whatever the questions, wherever you lead. Amen.

Friday, February 27, 2026 Matthew 9, focused on 9-17

Thank you, gracious Lord, that you are the doctor who has come to cure us. Help us to celebrate your new life with gratitude and love. Amen.

Saturday, February 28, 2026 Matthew 17:1-9

Lord Jesus, Son of the living God, show us your glory, and give us ears to listen to what you have to say to us. Amen.

Sunday, March 1, 2026 Psalm 121

Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, in your mercy watch over us and all your people. Give us outward safety and an inward trust in you which will enable us to bring help to others. Amen.

Monday, March 2, 2026 Matthew 10:1-15

Gracious Lord Jesus, make us instruments of your peace, and of your saving kingdom, wherever we go. Amen.

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 Matthew 10, focused on 10:16-25

Give us courage, O Lord, to follow you and to bear whatever suffering or insults may come as a result. Amen.

Wednesday, March 4, 2026 Matthew 11, focused on 11:1-19

Lord, give us grace to recognize you, to hail you as our Lord and King, and to follow you even when we too are misunderstood. Amen.

Thursday, March 5, 2026 Matthew 12:1-21, focused on 12:15-21

Humble Lord Jesus, as you reach out to us in your gentle love, help us find the way to bring your kingdom in our own day. Amen.

Friday, March 6, 2026 Matthew 12:22-50, focused on 12:27-32

Gracious Lord, give us the humility to see you at work, and to work alongside you in the power of the Spirit. Amen.

Saturday, March 7, 2026 Matthew 13, focused on 13:31-33, 44-46

Lord Jesus, tell us again the story of your kingdom, and draw us to follow you, to find the treasure, to help in the work of making that kingdom grow. Amen.

Sunday, March 8, 2026 Psalm 95

Sovereign God, we praise you for your wonderful world, and we pray that you will replace our grumbles with gratitude, and our questioning with adoration. Amen.

Listen to Him

Meditation on Matthew 17:1-9

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Transfiguration Sunday

Feb. 15, 2026

Are you watching the Olympics? What’s your favorite event? Skating is my favorite winter sport. Although, it was difficult to watch the men’s figure skating Friday night. Who saw it?

The one who won the gold was a complete surprise—even to Mikhail Shaidorov, the 21-year-old skater from Kazakhstan, who won. Both Mikhail and Japan’sYuma Kagiyama, who won the silver, had errors in their free skate program and didn’t expect to go home with medals.

The athlete who was expected to win the gold, the one whom they had nicknamed the “Quad God,” didn’t make the podium at all. He shocked the world by falling in his free skate more than once and finishing 8^th. Ilia Malinin from Vienna, VA, had been featured in commercials and teasers for days leading up to the event. Jim kept muttering, “When are we going to see him skate?” In between other Olympic events, the camera would turn to him practicing his jumps—perfectly every time.

So, we are all left wondering what happened.

Ben Church of CNN Sports says, Ilia “took the ice in Milan having not lost a competition in more than two years. He held a commanding five-point lead heading into the free skate, a gap that only widened while his challengers skidded and fell before him. Average ‘Quad God’ would have earned him a gold medal. Instead, he popped his quad axel, the beginning of four minutes that started to feel like rubbernecking a car accident. You didn’t want to watch; you couldn’t stop watching. His failure in real time was somehow more jaw-dropping for its unexpected underperformance than his usual quad-popping is for its overperformance.”[1]

The young skater, O’Neill says, “discovered the enormity of the Games only when it was too late. ‘It’s not like any other competition,’ Ilia said. ‘It’s the Olympics, and I think people only realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. It was just something that overwhelmed me, and I felt like I had no control.’”[2]

What was most heartbreaking to me was when Ilia told the world what caused him to break down during the skate. While the audience was cheering him on, his past was haunting him. “All the traumatic moments of my life,” he said, “really just started flooding my head.”[3]

Like the Olympians we cheered on this week, chosen as the best of the best athletes in the world, the three disciples ascending the mountain with Jesus are also special. They have been chosen for their particular gifts and characteristics and the future ministry that God has planned. The passage begins with, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.” The others were not invited. Think about this. Of all the people in the world Jesus could have chosen to follow him, he chose these 12 ordinary people. And of the 12, he chose 3 to be the imperfect leaders of the group: Peter, James, and John.

They are chosen to see this vision of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah. Peter, formerly a fisherman, is now ready to be a builder of tents— for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Not here, but in other gospels, his suggestion is described as a blunder. In Mark 9, after he volunteers to build the tents, the writer says in verse 6, “For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.” In Luke 9:33, Peter says to Jesus, “‘Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said.”

Peter will be the one to whom Christ will say, “You are Peter, Petros, and upon this rock I will build my church.” He will also rebuke him in Mark 8:33, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” He will stumble and fall repeatedly during his 3-year journey with the Savior, culminating with his greatest fall, when he denies Christ three times before the cock crows and the Lord is led to his death.

This startling and terrifying encounter on the mountain is understood and will be remembered by all their human senses. Their muscles have felt the physicality of the climb. Their lungs have labored, feeling the difference in the oxygen content of the air at the summit. Their eyes have strained to adjust to the unaccustomed brilliance of the light of the Son. A bright cloud overshadows them as they hear the unmistakable voice of God, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

Peter, James, and John will never be the same, again, though they are warned by Jesus to tell no one of this experience until he has risen from the dead. This memory, though frightening and humbling at the time, will be comforting and reassuring later, after Jesus has gone home to God and the Spirit comes to empower and send them out in Christ’s name.

The word for us today is, “Listen to him!” This word, listen, is “Shema,” as in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God the Lord alone.” “The Shemah” is a Jewish prayer recited morning and night as a daily reminder of the covenant between God and the people. To listen, then, is not just to hear God speak. To listen is to trust and obey and follow God’s leading to love and serve with heart, soul, mind, and might.[4]

It can be hard to hear the voice of the Lord in a world where there are so many voices, many of which are negative rather than life giving. Sometimes, as the young “Quad God” from Vienna, VA, learned on Friday, the negativity doesn’t come from the people around us, but from our very own thoughts and bad memories.

Ilia was not the only talented Olympic skater to fail to win a medal. I was routing for Team USA’s Max Naumov, who finished the competition in 20^th place. After he skated, he held up a picture of his 3-year-old self, holding hands on the ice with his parents. Both were former Olympic skaters who were among the 67 people who tragically lost their lives in January 2025 when their plane collided with a helicopter minutes before it was scheduled to land in Washington, D.C.

“I wanted them to…literally share that moment with me,” Max said. “Cause they deserve it. They deserve to be there, right next to me.” After his parents’ death, the young man took over their skating academy. He wasn’t sure he would ever skate competitively again, but teaching the children helped him remember his love for the sport.

When the shining vision ends, Peter, James, and John are cowering in fear on the ground. Jesus goes to them, touches them and says in Matthew 17:7, “Arise and do not be afraid.” With “arise,” Jesus is extending an invitation to us all to “rise above the old and to come forth into the light of a brand-new day.” Unexpected events come without warning, just as they did for the Olympians. These events can bring joy and gladness and grief, pain, and loss. “When these moments come,” says Pastor Rafael Vallejo, of Vancouver, British Columbia, “it can be comforting to know that there is an unseen hand” that lifts us up.[5]

As we ordain and install elders and deacons today, let us remember that they are not chosen to do the work of our ministry by themselves. They are our servant leaders, and we are called to walk alongside them and help them help us learn to trust and obey.

May we never get discouraged or give up on our hopes and dreams for the church.

May we remember to pray for our leaders and our church family. May we all learn to forgive quickly—forgive one another and ourselves. And may we never let past mistakes or bad memories cause us to stumble. May God bless our elders, deacons, and trustees for their willingness to serve the Lord with their gifts, skills, and experiences—all of which have been preparing them for this moment. To our new elders, deacons, and trustees, I say this. God is calling you now to arise and be not afraid. May you never grow weary of doing good. And may you always listen for God’s voice and be that unseen hand lifting up others if they stumble and fall.

Let us pray. Holy One, we don’t know why you have chosen us. We are imperfect, like your first disciples. But we are grateful for your love and good plan for us. Sometimes, we forget how faithful you have always been and your tender care of us, how your unseen hand has lifted us when we were struggling. Thank you for those who have agreed to serve you and your church. Teach us to pray. And may we all hear your voice, calling us to arise and be not afraid. May we know your will and come forth into the light of a brand new day. In Christ we pray. Amen.

[1] Ben Church, CNN Sports, accessed Feb. 14, 2026, at https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/13/sport/ilia-malinin-winter-olympics-shock

[2] Ben Church, CNN Sports, accessed Feb. 14, 2026, at https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/13/sport/ilia-malinin-winter-olympics-shock

[3] Ben Church, CNN Sports, accessed Feb. 14, 2026, at https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/13/sport/ilia-malinin-winter-olympics-shock

[4] Rev. Rafael Vallejo, Vancouver, BC, in These Days: Daily Devotions for Living by Faith (Louisville: Presbyterian Publishing Corp., 2026), Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026.

[5] Rev. Rafael Vallejo, in These Days: Daily Devotions for Living by Faith, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026.

You Are Salt and Light!

Meditation on Matthew 5:13-20

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

Feb. 8, 2026

She was born into slavery in Swartekill, NY, around 1797. We don’t know the exact date.

She was called Isabella at birth, but the world wouldn’t know her by that name. She spoke only Dutch as a child.[1]She never received formal education. She knew the Bible through stories told to her and songs that were sung by slaves working in the fields. She was forced into labor at 5. At 9, she was separated from her parents and sold for $100, with a flock of sheep. She was sold two more times; the third for $200. She had 10 or 12 brothers and sisters. All were sold and separated.

She fell in love with Robert in 1815. He was enslaved on a neighboring farm. Their love story ended tragically. Robert’s “enslaver had him murdered to prevent him from fathering children he could not enslave himself.”[2] Her first child, James, died in childhood, most likely from “the harsh and inhumane conditions of his enslavement.”[3] Her final owners were especially cruel. She suffered physical abuse and was raped. She had a second child, Diana, before she was forced into marriage with another enslaved man. She had three more children—Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia—whom she struggled to properly feed because she was expected to nurse her white enslaver’s children, too.

Her enslaver promised to set her free before 1827, the date when all remaining enslaved people in New York would be freed, according to legislation. But then he changed his mind and decided that she would never be freed. She escaped in 1826, a year before the law took effect. She later said, “I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.”[4] She fled with Sophia, her infant daughter, who would be bound to indentured servitude to her mother’s enslaver until she was 25. Isabella left behind her three older children, still legally required to serve her owner until their 20s.

Isabella found refuge with Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen. The abolitionist couple who lived in New Paltz purchased her freedom for $20 or $25. She took their last name. With their help, she sued for the return of her 5-year-old son, Peter. Her enslaver had illegally sold him to an enslaver in Alabama. Emancipation laws required that he remain in New York till he was 28. After a year-long legal battle, a judge ruled in her favor, making her the first black woman to sue a white man and win. [5]

Isaac and Maria had a strong faith. And their faith, kindness and generosity rubbed off on Isabella. She became fervent in her faith, as well. In 1827, she participated in the founding of a Methodist Church in Kingston, NY, and moved to NYC in 1829 and joined the John Street Methodist Church. She went to work as a housekeeper, first for Elijah Pierson and then Robert Matthews. Both were preachers. On June 1,1843, on Pentecost Sunday, she heard the Spirit of God calling her to leave the city and go into the countryside testifying to the hope that was in her. She changed her name to…Does anyone know? Sojourner Truth.

In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Florence, MA. The organization was founded by abolitionists and supported women’s rights, religious tolerance, and pacifism. They lived on 470 acres, raising livestock, and running a gristmill and silk factory. She oversaw the laundry, supervising women and men. While there, Sojourner met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. Encouraged by the community, she delivered her first anti-slavery speech that year.

She began dictating her memoirs to her friend, Olive Gilbert, and Garrison published it as a book in 1850 titled, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave [6] That year, the former slave bought her first home in Florence for $300 and, in 1854, with the proceeds from her narrative, paid off the mortgage.

Our passage in Matthew 5 today is part of the Sermon on the Mount, which extends from chapters 5 through 7 and begins with Jesus sitting down to preach the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Or “Wonderful News,” as N.T. Wright translates, “for the poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven is yours. Wonderful news for the mourners! You’re going to be comforted. Wonderful news for the meek. You’re going to inherit the earth. Wonderful news for people who hunger and thirst for God’s justice. You’re going to be satisfied.”[7] With the Beatitudes, Jesus doesn’t just provide of list of behaviors we must try to emulate. They are “a summons, he says, to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future. Because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth.”[8]

“It may seem upside down,” Wright goes on, “but we are called to believe with great daring that it is in fact the right way up. Try it and see.”[9]

We come to today’s passage at verse 13, “You are the salt of the earth.” And “You are the light of the world.” Salt that is no longer salty—or has lost the ability to preserve food (which is its main use in the time of Christ) and heal wounds—is worthless. You might as well throw it on the ground and trample it.

Light, without which life cannot exist, is one of the first things God creates, when the Lord says in Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light.” Light that is hidden isn’t light at all. When Jesus tells Israel that they are the city on the hill, he is talking about Jerusalem, which is no longer being faithful to their one, true God of Israel. They no longer follow with their hearts God’s law, the 10 Commandments, the sum of which are love of God and neighbor.

With salt and light, Jesus is reminding them of the promise of God to Abraham that God will bless him and his family, so that they may be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

Jesus is reminding them of God speaking through the prophet Isaiah in 42:6,

“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations.”

And in 49:6:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob
    and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

When I read Jesus’ teaching to be salt and light, I feel sad. We are continuing to see churches on Long Island dwindle and close. And our nation is embroiled in divisions and growing in incivility. We are not being salt and light, let alone a blessing for all the families of the earth.

My friends, now, more than ever, we have a great need for our Savior and spiritual transformation. For Christ is the only true Light of the World, a light that shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome by it. A light that came to share our lives with us, embrace us with God’s love and make us whole, a light that was rejected by his own people, and suffered on a cross.

Sisters and brothers, I urge you to look at the faithful example of an uneducated and formerly enslaved woman who carried and shared the message of the gospel to all she met. She wasn’t afraid to speak up for what was right and true. Her example proves that you don’t have to have a formal education or be white to be given the mind of Christ. n 1851, her best-known speech was given extemporaneously at the Ohio Women’s Convention in Akron. During the Civil War, when she helped recruit black men for the Union Army, her speech was published under the title, “Ain’t I A Woman?”[10] She died in 1883 at her Battle Creek, MI, home. She had dedicated her life to fighting for a more equal society for African Americans and for women. Frederick Douglass offered her eulogy in Washington, D.C., saying,

“Venerable for age, distinguished for insight into human nature, remarkable for independence and courageous self-assertion, devoted to the welfare of her race, she has been for the last forty years an object of respect and admiration to social reformers everywhere.”[11]

Today, we find her likeness on numerous monuments, busts, and statues, such as one in the U.S. Capitol and one in Central Park. She is the subject of works of art, such as one by Frances Titus in 1892 of her meeting with Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and a crocheted mural in Akron Civic Theatre’s outer wall. Elementary schools, apartment buildings, and women’s shelters are named for her. An asteroid, railroad car, song, NASA robotic rover, New York state park, college, library, museum, and a U.S. Naval ship bear her name. She has appeared on a U.S. stamp and may one day appear with other women on a $10 bill. You can catch part of her speech, “Ain’t I A Women” in a Broadway musical. She is featured on Smithsonian’s list of 100 most significant Americans of all time and remembered annually on an Episcopal calendar of saints. [12]

Let us remember that all she accomplished was not through any sort of ease of life, wealth or privilege, but through her faith and relationship with a God who loves all people the same and has made peace with God and humanity with the cross. Let us recall and live out our belief that there are no distinctions in Jesus Christ. “There’s no more Jew or Gentile,” Paul tells us in Galatians 3:28, “no slave or free. No longer male and female. We all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Let us pray.

Holy One, we give thanks for the example of Sojourner Truth and for her strong faith and perseverance through great suffering and loss. Thank you that in her lifetime she was appreciated for the wisdom she spoke and the good works she had done, with your help and the Spirit as her guide. Thank you that many still remember her and share her concern for the equality and justice of all people, no matter their gender or the color of their skin. And we thank you for your gracious and merciful Son, who is our peace, and his words to us, urging and empowering us to be salt and light in a dark world. Amen.

[1] Jeroen Dewulf, “Sojourner Truth: How the Enslaved Woman of a Dutch-New York Family Became an Icon of America’s Black Liberation Movement,” accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at vhttps://artshumanities.berkeley.edu/news/sojourner-truth-how-enslaved-woman-dutch-new-york-family-became-icon-america%E2%80%99s-black-liberation

[2] “Sojourner Truth,” National Women’s History Museum, edited by Debra Michals, 2015, updated by Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto, 2025-2027 NWHM Predoctoral Research Fellow in Museum Studies, 2025, accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth.

[3] Sojourner Truth,” National Women’s History Museum, 2025, accessed Feb. 7, 2026.

[4] “Sojourner Truth,” at History.Com, May 28, 2025, accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://www.history.com/articles/sojourner-truth

[5] “Sojourner Truth,” National Women’s History Museum, 2025, accessed Feb. 7, 2026.

[6] Sojourner Truth, “Narrative of a Northern Slave,” accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Truth_Narrative_1850_edition.pdf

[7] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 34.

[8] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 38.

[9] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 38.

[10] National Women’s History Museum, accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth

[11] Michael F. Bishop, “Sojourner Truth,” at David Bruce Smith’s Grateful American Foundation, accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://gratefulamericanfoundation.org/sojourner-truth/#:~:text=After%20her%20death%2C%20Frederick%20Douglass%20said%20of%20her%2C%20%E2%80%9CVenerable%20for%20age&text=He%20is%20the%20author%20of%20%E2%80%9CWe%20Shall,Churchill’s%20Greatest%20Speech%2C%E2%80%9D%20to%20be%20published%20by

[12] “Sojourner Truth: Legacy, Additional Recognition, and Works of Art,” Wikipedia, accessed Feb. 7, 2026, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth

Fishers of People!

Meditation on Matthew 4:12–23

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

Feb. 1, 2026

Jim and I watched a heartwarming movie yesterday. It was a 2019 biographical drama called, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Have you seen it?

It was inspired by a 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod, “Can You Say….Hero?” Junod was an investigative, hard-hitting journalist who had won awards for his controversial stories but hurt people and made many enemies along the way.

His editor startles him one day when she tells him that she has an assignment for him. He has to go interview Fred Rogers for a puff piece about heroes. When he pleads with her to give him a different assignment, she says that Mr. Rogers is the only one who would talk with him. Junod approaches the work reluctantly and then as he has always pursued his stories, cynically looking for something bad about him to reveal to the world. What he discovers is a man who really is the same man he portrays on his children’s television show, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Rogers, a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, continually surprises and, at first, dismays Junod by how much he seems to care about him, his family, and everyone else he meets. Rogers shows his care through the time he takes with every child or adult who visits him on the set or approaches him on the street, through phone calls, shared meals, and most of all, through listening with kindness and asking gentle but probing questions as others share their deepest wounds and greatest vulnerabilities.

Junod’s relationship with Mr. Rogers gradually changes his perspective on life and faith. He finds healing and wholeness from wounds carried and hidden since childhood. He is strengthened to face personal challenges, examine and express feelings never expressed. At the end, he reconciles with an alcoholic father who abused and abandoned him and his sister as small children and left their dying mother. And the hard-hitting, award-winning journalist comes to the realize that his relationship with his own wife and baby are more important than what he does for a living.

Throughout this sweet movie, which brings back memories from my childhood in the 1960s and 70s and of watching him with my own children in the 1990s, I can only be amazed at all the gifts that God gave Fred Rogers that he faithfully used to fish for people.

Today, when we are experiencing frigid temperatures and the world outside is white and frozen, I hope it warms your heart to be walking with Jesus by the seashore in the gospel of Matthew. Who knows how often Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee? He had recently left his hometown of Nazareth and moved to the seaside village of Capernaum, which would become his base for ministry. Maybe walking by the sea was what he did every day as he listened for God’s voice and sought God’s will.

The arrest of John the Baptist stirred his move to Capernaum. John and Jesus were friends and kin, as their mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, were cousins. The arrest is a signal; it’s time for his ministry to begin.

Jesus could have done it all by himself. He could have just gone from place to place to heal and feed, encourage and comfort, teach and preach, “The kingdom of God is drawing near.” But he chose to do ministry with a community of people, who would learn from him and share in the compassionate labor—and continue in the labor after Jesus is no longer with them.

Their call, says theologian Anna Case-Winters, is not to “form a cult of Jesus.”[1] It’s not even “to accept him as their personal Lord and savior. They are called to follow him; to walk in the way that he is walking as he proclaims and makes manifest the reign of heaven.”[2] In these four men—Peter and Andrew, James and John—we find a “prototype of all future followers who will respond to Jesus’ call.” They hear his voice, immediately drop everything, and walk away from their work that sustains them and their families. “They do not ask where he is going, and he does not tell them. There is no mention of their being ‘apostles’ to hint at their future importance. Nor is there mention of what this calling will cost them. Did Peter and Andrew have any inkling that they would both end up crucified?”[3]

These four hardworking people are fishers. James and John are also relatives of Jesus. They are sons of Zebedee and Salome, who is a sister to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Let’s think for a minute about whom the Lord chooses to play such a role in God’s important work of salvation.

First, the shepherds in Luke are among the lowest class of people, living rough in the fields with the animals. This dangerous and lonely work leaves them vulnerable to heat, cold, rain, wind; wild animals, such as wolves, bears, lions, and snakes; and unsavory characters—outlaws, robbers, thieves, and murderers.

The fishermen in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are also among the lowest class of people. In the ranking of occupations by the famous Roman statesman, philosopher, and orator Cicero, “owners of cultivated land rank first and fishermen last. In Athenaeus’s writings they are placed on par with moneylenders and are socially despised as greedy thieves.” What’s more, they are “obligated to the empire, which has an economic monopoly… Not only must they supply enough fish for themselves and the empire they must pay tax upon what they retain and tax upon any transport of fish.”[4] It is no exaggeration to say that “Peter, Andrew, James, and John lead an economically and socially precarious existence.”[5] Jesus’ calling, then, comes first to some of the most vulnerable and ordinary of people.

And all Jesus promises is that he will teach them how to fish for people.

Today, as we remember the call of Christ’s first followers, it is natural to consider our own calls. For Jesus has called us all to follow him. Have you heard his voice? Have you said yes to the call?

The call is unique for every person. We all have different gifts, talents, and passions. Look around and consider your brothers and sisters in the faith. Isn’t it wonderful what God is doing and has done with us? Just think, my friends, that God still has more amazing things planned for you and me. Expect to be surprised!

Watching Mr. Rogers and his patience with the cynical reporter in the film brought tears to my eyes. Because I know it’s true. Fred Rogers really was the person we saw on television. He was imperfect, human, but also good and kind, gentle and faithful. He knew the Lord and understood what God was calling him to do. He didn’t shrink from the challenge. He didn’t let anything distract him from his ministry focus of reaching out to children and young families, helping them manage their feelings and understand that they are special and worth loving, just the way they are. And that the kingdom of heaven isn’t far off in time or beyond this world. It begins at this moment, in this place.

Junod writes in his article that inspired the movie, “Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn’t want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said,

“The connections we make in the course of a life—maybe that’s what heaven is, Tom. We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us—I’ve just met you, but I’m investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.”[6]

My favorite scene in the movie is when Mr. Rogers is riding the subway to work, and the cynical journalist is with him. The children and adults around Fred Rogers are silently watching as if in awe of him. Suddenly they burst into song,

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

It’s a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Won’t you please,
Won’t you please?
Please won’t you be my neighbor?

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your Son, Jesus, who walks along the seashore calling to his first disciples and to all of us to follow him. Help us to hear his voice and courageously and immediately respond, though we know we are all imperfect and in need of your healing in our broken places. Teach us to listen with love and be gentle and nonjudgmental when others with wounds trust us with their stories and struggles. Stir us to share about our relationship with Jesus, the source and finisher of our faith. Lead us to be fishers of people. Amen.

[1]Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, from the series “Belief, a Theological Commentary on the Bible” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 57.

[2] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, 57.

[3] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, 57.

[4] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, 57.

[5] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, 57.

[6] Tom Junod, “Can You Say….Hero?” in Esquire (Nov. 1998), accessed Jan. 31, 2026, at https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=mgu_ga_esq_md_pmx_prog_org_us_18717285305&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=18710104992&gbraid=0AAAAACq-et19pv9XRfFuQ_zedi8dhOm6S&gclid=Cj0KCQiA7fbLBhDJARIsAOAqhsd-Iyx6xUxDcuDfv7sWVkepIU0mLoHrkUmGn7Xhe3Anusa6COq2f1kaAinpEALw_wcB

Full of Joy in the Lord

Meditation on Philippians 4 and John 14

In Memory of Harold Stanley Scott

April 10, 1934 – January 12, 2026

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

January 24, 2026

He was working a part time job, guarding the ice at Belmont Lake State Park, making sure the kids didn’t go on thin ice and fall in.

Joan’s friend, Margie, had said to her, “Joan, I have met the man that you are going to marry.”

The first thing Joan noticed about him was his big smile and how joyful he seemed.

Scotty was born Harold Stanley Scott to Vivian and Roland Scott on April 10, 1934. His younger sister, Ethel, was born about two years later. Roland, their dad, had no education beyond high school. He was involved in local politics in the Town of Babylon.

Scotty was baptized in the First Presbyterian Church of Babylon. His mother was Superintendent of the Sunday School. He was drawn to the Holy Scriptures at an early age. He memorized Psalm 23 as a young boy and never forgot it. He received a Bible on Sept. 24, 1944, from the Presbyterian Bible School in Babylon. He was confirmed and became a member of Babylon Presbyterian on June 1, 1949.

His pastor, the Rev. Albert Allison Leininger, was strict. He preached against drinking, dancing, and playing cards or BINGO. But Scotty always believed in a loving and gracious God whom he wanted to follow and please with his life.

The Lord had given him a love for music. He enjoyed singing and played saxophone in the marching band at Babylon High School. He was popular with his classmates, who signed his yearbook, The Trawler, in his senior year in 1952. They called him “Carrot Top” for his red hair. They said he was “swell,” had a “contagious laugh,” and was “easy to blush.” One person wrote, “Good luck to the funniest man in the band!”

Scotty dreamed of becoming a dairy farmer. He graduated in 1954 from what was, at the time, SUNY Long Island Agricultural and Technical Institute at Farmingdale. But working on dairy farms in upstate New York for two summers opened his eyes to the difficult life, milking the cows twice a day and getting up at 4 a.m.

One day, a man from the State Health Department came to inspect the dairy farm where he was working. Scotty decided, from that moment on, that he wanted to be a health inspector, instead of a farmer. He landed a summer job working for the Suffolk County Health Department in Bay Shore. They were surprised by his maturity and work ethic; they offered him a career position. He received additional training and experience in the U.S. Air Force in 1957 working as an inspector for the food being served to the servicemen and women. He would eventually work for the Suffolk County Health Department office in Hauppauge, finish his bachelor’s degree from Empire State College in 1977, and retire from the health department after 33 years in 1990.

Are you wondering whatever happened to the boy and girl who met at Belmont Lake State Park in the early 1960s? Scotty called Joan a week or so later and they began dating. But it would be another 10 years of dating off and on before they decided to marry. What was holding them back? Their religious differences.

Joan was a faithful Roman Catholic who was never going to be Presbyterian. And Scotty was a faithful Presbyterian who was never going to be Roman Catholic. And Scotty’s father was against his son marrying a woman who was Catholic. When Scotty was determined that he would marry Joan, this was the first time Scotty had ever stood up to his father.

They married in St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in East Islip on Dec. 12, 1971. Through Scotty, Joan began to see the Lord in a new perspective—as Scotty saw the Lord as a loving and gracious God, merciful and quick to forgive. Every morning at the kitchen table, he led them in Bible reading, devotion, and prayer from Our Daily Bread.

“He brought me peace and joy,” she says.

They moved to Smithtown soon after they were married. They began their first of many travels that spring, going to Bermuda. Their adventures together over the decades include vacations in Hawaii, Colorado, and the southern states; Caribbean Cruises; and a trip to a Mexican resort. They managed to get lost when they became detached from a tour group in Bryce Canyon. They traveled on a sailing ship with just 60 other people. They went to the Mediterranean and through the Panama Canal; they visited an active island volcano at night that was like a spectacular fireworks show.

Scotty joined the First Presbyterian Church when the Rev. Bill Brown was the pastor. The couple began attending services at Sts. Philip and James Roman Catholic Church in St. James and the Presbyterian church in Smithtown every week for years, although Scotty did stand out in the Catholic church.

“Catholics don’t sing,” Joan says, “and he’s belting out all the hymns.”

The Scriptures that Joan and I chose for today’s celebration of Scotty’s life were not all the Scriptures that were significant and relevant to him and Joan. There were many more! It was difficult to narrow our choices down to 5 or 6, including Psalm 23, which Scotty memorized as a child.

John 14 speaks of the promise of a house with enough rooms for every believer in the world to come. Friends, there’s room for Lutherans and Methodists; Anglicans, Episcopalians and Lutherans; UCC and AME; Baptists and Brethrens; and yes, Presbyterians and Roman Catholics and others, too. And we all live and serve and praise the Lord together in the Kingdom of God right now.

Jesus, in John 14, promises that he will never leave us orphaned in this world. He will always be with us through the gift of his Spirit, the Advocate and Comforter, whom he sent to dwell with us, help and lead us in our walk with God. And we mustn’t worry about things. Rather, we should trust in God, trust in Christ. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says. “And do not be afraid.”

The passage in Philippians was one that Joan often read with Scotty, especially when things were difficult. Paul reminds us in this passage, written while he was in prison for sharing his faith, not to worry about things, but to pray about everything, to be thankful and joyful—not because we are always happy, but because we have the joy of the Lord as a gift. This joy is our strength.

Paul teaches us that we have the power to direct our own thoughts. He provides a list of things to think about for the resilience of our hope and faith. He says, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” And he tells us to keep on doing the good things that we have learned to do from the apostle and the Lord: ^“Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing.”

Here’s the promise if we are thinking on the things in this list and doing the things that Paul and our Lord are leading us to do. “Then the God of peace,” he says, “will be with you.”

Scotty became active with our church as soon as he became a member in the early 1970s. He sang with the groups that went Christmas caroling and he was ordained and began active service as a deacon on June 5, 1980. He helped build houses with a group from our church for Habitat for Humanity in 1988.

After he retired from the health department, he enthusiastically labored as a volunteer, even more, serving food and washing dishes for the soup kitchen operating out of churches in Port Jefferson. In 1992, he was recognized for his volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes by the Smithtown News. In 1994, Newsday recognized him for his volunteer service, as well.

He would later help with the El Salvador ministry, traveling with groups from our church for three years to work in a medical mission and share the joy of the Lord and friendship. He went even though the food was out of his comfort zone. Debbie Rosenberg remembers how he would ask as they sat down to a meal, “Can I get a hamburger?”

When I met Scotty in 2022, he was struggling with some health problems. My first impression, when I visited him and Joan at their Smithtown home, was that he was polite and sweet, and a snappy dresser. He smiled at me when I sat at the kitchen table with him and Joan. He always appreciated when I brought them the bread and cup and celebrated Communion with them and continued visiting when he was in the hospital and nursing home after he injured his neck.

In 2023, when Parkinson’s had progressed and he needed more care, he moved to the Long Island State Veteran’s Home. That was a sorrowful day for him, as he and Joan sat sharing their half a sandwich at the kitchen table, as they had done for years. Scotty recognized what Joan did not at the time—that it would be his last meal in his Smithtown home. He would not be where he wanted to be from then on. He wanted to be with the love of his life.

Scotty and Joan really were a match made in heaven, though people on earth may not have recognized it, at first. For you see, it never really mattered that she was Catholic and he was Presbyterian. What mattered was their love for one another and the love and joy for the Lord and God’s people that they shared.

Their love was always on display when I brought carolers to sing to Scotty and Joan every December for the last four years. The man who could only say a few words because of Parkinson’s would join us in singing every verse of the Christmas songs.

Tears would stream down faces as he did a very un-Catholic thing, when he belted out the hymns: Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.

It was as if the Lord had given him who could barely speak a wonderful collection of good thoughts that he would never forget. He still had the power to fix his mind on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

You have that power, too.

And the God of peace was always with him, just as the God of peace will always be with you.

Amen.

You Are There

Meditation on Psalm 139 and John 14, selected verses

In memory of Margaret Murray Cowie

January 22, 1921 – January 17, 2026

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Jan. 20, 2026

Margaret Murray was born on Jan. 22, 1921! Many people, upon meeting her, were surprised to learn her age. I guess you could say that she didn’t look nearly 105 years old. Then again, we don’t often meet people who have lived that long to know what one usually looks like when one lives beyond a century.

She was strong. She was smart. She was curious and caring, always wanting to hear the latest news from the church, sending many cards and letters to remember birthdays and anniversaries and cheer someone who was sick or grieving.

She was funny. She knew how to make people laugh, wherever she was. And you would know the moment she started to speak that she wasn’t from around here, though she had lived on Long Island for more than 60 years.

She was warm and welcoming. She loved people—her family most of all—and loved to get phone calls and receive visitors—from a dining room chair, covered with a blanket and wearing gloves in winter and on the front porch in summer, where she could see the birds on the feeder and the cars with dogs coming to the kennel that her family owned and operated since 1939.

She loved animals, especially dogs, especially golden retrievers, but some stray cats wormed their way into her heart. A white cat showed up once, eating bird seed on her patio. She started feeding it cat food outside, saying they would find another home for it. Then she started letting it in when it got cold. Then she named it “Twinkie,” because it was the color of the cream filling of Hostess Twinkies. She was never going to find it another home.

She learned to love American country music. The radio played 1050 Country all day long. She fell in love with Engelbert Humperdink and Tom Jones and continued to enjoy her Scottish records—the Alexander Brothers and Andy Stewart. Oh, and she did what many women in America did in the 1960s and 70s. She watched soap operas, such as The Edge of Night, whenever she ironed.

She was poised and beautiful, with lovely hazel eyes and fair skin. Whenever I visited her at her home, even with 5 or 10 minutes notice after I finished at church, she was carefully dressed, soft colors complimenting her complexion, highlighting her femininity, accessorized by rings and pins or brooches. Her hair was always neatly styled—wavy with the help of curlers, worn at night, and red with the help of Clairol. She said that she was a redhead when she came into this world, and she would be a redhead when she left it.

She was grateful, as there were some lonely days, for those who remembered her and sent a card or visited. Most of all, she was grateful for the care of her children, especially Sheila who lived with her, and made sure that she was always safe, well fed with three meals and tea and biscuits at 10, 3, and 7. She was never left alone.

Margaret was born to Catherine and William, a fisherman, in Helmsdale, a village on the east coast of the Sutherland area of Scotland. Helmsdale is a fishing port and was once the home of one of the largest herring fleets in Europe.

She was the second of six children—one older named Jeannie and four younger: Jessie, William, George, and James. She was a good student and was recognized with a certificate and prize for cooking from Helmsdale Higher Grade Public School for the school year 1933-34. The prize was the book, Great Expectations.

Her service in the British military in World War II, beginning when she was 19, was the thing that she was most proud of. She kept a picture of herself in uniform from that time with a friend, who served with her, near her favorite chair. I just found out that she was featured in a 2015 book called, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland. This is what she said in her interview in 2011:

Well, in 1940, I joined the NAAFI. That’s the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute and I worked in the canteen in the aerodrome in Wick for a year, then to Castletown for another year. Then there was the conscription and the women had to join the service. In 1942, I was 21 years old and I went to Inverness to register. Two weeks after that, I was called up. I did my training in the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, then to South England for more training then to Whitby in Yorkshire. I was in the Ack Ack or Anti-Aircraft unit, and I served until they asked for volunteers to go overseas. I volunteered because they wanted the women to take over the men’s jobs so they could go to the frontline. I was attached to the Military Police in France, and I was there for a while and as the war progressed, into Germany, then into Belgium where I stayed until the end of the war.

It was an interesting experience but it really was a good life! It was a good life. There was 6 in our family. I went into the Army, my two sisters went into munitions. Of my three brothers—two went into the Navy, and one went into the Army. We all got home Scot free![1]

Margaret met Hamish Cowie after the war, when she was working in housekeeping at a hotel with his sister, Sheila, who introduced them. He was good looking, a police officer, but it wasn’t love at first sight.

They were married on Nov. 24, 1948, in Margaret’s church in Helmsdale. The couple lived in Tain and Fearn while Hamish worked as a policeman. They had a son, John, then two daughters, Kathleen, and Sheila after a long gap, before the family emigrated to America on July 5, 1959.

Hamish’s uncle had been living in Commack for about 20 years; he was breeding golden retrievers and had a small dog kennel named Fonab after a castle in the Highlands where Hamish’s father worked as a gamekeeper. The uncle’s grandchildren weren’t interested in taking over the kennel; it was an opportunity for a new life for Hamish, Margaret, and the children.

But life in America was very different than the family was used to. Margaret was terribly homesick. Bringing up three children in a country she didn’t know was almost too much for her in the beginning. Margaret said that if it hadn’t been for the Scottish immigrants on Long Island that they met through the Daughters of Scotia, Margaret said she would have been on the first boat out of here.

The Lyndsay Lodge became like family to her. They shared memories and common struggles and kept alive the stories, history, music, and traditions of the old country. Margaret and Hamish enjoyed the Highland Games, Scottish Country Dancing and the annual Burns Supper, along with other meetings, rites, and socials. Margaret was selected for the highest position of service, the Grand Chief Daughter, traveling to bring greetings and help connect all the lodges around the country.

Margaret and her husband, Hamish, also gained a church home and faith family when they started attending the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown in the 1960s. They quickly made friends. They were founding members of the Highlanders, which organized the Burns Supper each year, among other Scottish heritage events and activities.

Our reading in Psalm 139 is assurance that there is nowhere we could go in this world where God is not already there. This is assurance for those whose lives take them to unexpected places, that don’t always feel like home. Have you ever been somewhere unexpected? We cannot go anywhere that the Lord God isn’t already there. The Lord God is himself our strength and refuge.

When I read this passage, particularly beginning at verse 7, I think of Margaret, Hamish, and their children’s long journey from Scotland and their new life here, which felt so different than the home of their birth.

⁷Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.

Jesus, in our gospel reading in John, assures us that we all have a place, a forever home, in his Father’s house of many rooms. With his death and resurrection, he has prepared a place for all who believe and seek to know and follow him. We have the promise that he will come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, we will also be. The apostle Paul will tell us in his letter to the Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sometimes, people would ask Margaret what her secret was for living a long life. She would just smile and shrug. I know she didn’t worry about cholesterol or calories. She ate meat and potatoes and soup. She was a great baker of sweets as Hamish loved his desserts: shortbread and “millionaire shortbread” topped with layers of caramel and chocolate; currant slices; and one-layer cakes, filled with cream and raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar; she made tapioca pudding and rice pudding, too. She stayed active for most of her life, waiting on customers in the kennel until she and Hamish retired, cooking and cleaning the house, and exercising on a treadmill she kept under her chair. Interestingly, she never learned to drive—so maybe that was one less stress in her life. Oh, and she read her horoscope every day. She brought a clipping of one to church when she was 102 and it promised that she would live to be 103. Well, what do the horoscope writers know, anyway?

Margaret and I had a moving experience when she was in the ICU last month. For the first 20 minutes or so of the visit, she was asleep. I couldn’t bear to wake her, so I just sat quietly and had my own private conversation with the Lord. When she awoke and saw me, I rejoiced in her look of recognition in what can be a very disorienting place, with IVs and catheters, 24-hour lights and the beeping of machines. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She made a funny face, as if she were saying, “It’s you, again!” We laughed. Then, she looked out the window at the whiteness and remembered her faraway home of her birth. Snow had fallen and a morning fog hid the sun.

“Look at the mist!” she said, her face brightening. For a moment, she was back in her Scotland home. It was a gift from the Lord.

The promise of Christ’s presence is not just something for the future—for someday, after we die. The Lord is with us now revealing Christ’s love and helping us in so many secret ways. Christ has sent his Advocate, his Holy Spirit, to dwell with us, and teach us everything that he wanted us to know and lead us to be peacemakers, reconcilers, and healers in this broken world.

The Holy Spirit is our comfort and strength when we lose a loved one and can’t imagine a future without her. And the Body of Christ—gathered in this room and beyond, in every place and time—is the hands, feet, and heart of Christ, helping each other carry the burden of grief and find hope and purpose in the Lord every day.

Dear friends, wherever there is the Spirit, we are home. As the psalmist and the apostle assure us, there’s nowhere we go in this world and the next, where the Spirit of God and the love of our Savior is not.

Listen to Christ’s powerful words for all time once more and remember that you are not alone. And that we have all what we need each day to carry on.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Amen.

[1] Jeanette B. Reid, Ph.D, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland (NY: Page Publishing, 2015) 28-29.

He Brought Simon to Jesus

Meditation on John 1:29-42

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

January 18, 2026

If I were to choose a theme for our ministry together this year, I would want it to be a year of slowing down. Would any of you be OK with that theme?

Lately, I have had the feeling that our lives are just speeding by us. That things are moving too fast in a 24-hour news cycle. Most people around us on Long Island always seem to be in a hurry. We are often in a hurry.

I have been reading a book by a Japanese Christian theologian named Kosuke Koyama. The book is Three Mile an Hour God. Some background on Kosuke: he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York for 16 years. And he had been “a teenager in Tokyo and had come close to dying in U.S. air raid bombings of the Japanese capital during WWII.”[1] He had grown up in a Christian family and never forgot the “incredibly courageous words spoken to him at his baptism by the pastor of his congregation. ‘Kosuke, God calls you in Jesus Christ to love all your neighbors, even the Americans.’” “The ‘even,’ says Union Seminary’s former president Donald Shriver Jr, “would become a theological watchword in the rest of his life.”[2]

Three Mile an Hour God is about a God who is slow. Deuteronomy 8:1-4 tells us that the 40- year wilderness journey of the Israelites was for one lesson: “to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

Forty years. One lesson.

God’s lesson couldn’t be learned easily in a comfortable classroom, Kosuke says. “God’s people must learn about bread and the word of God realistically and experientially. He took people into the wilderness.”[3] The wilderness is a place for possibilities, but it is also a “dangerous, desolate space inhabited by demons and evil spirits….The wilderness is full of promise and full of danger.”[4]

In the wilderness, we are closer to God than anywhere else. Or maybe it’s that we sense our being in the presence of God there. In the wilderness, we learn to trust in God for our every need. And in the wilderness, “our speed is slowed down until gradually we come to the speed in which we walk—three miles an hour.”[5]

Kosuke, writing in 1979, says, “We live today an efficient and speedy life. We are surrounded by electric switches, some of which cost us $10 and others may even cost $2000. We want more switches. Who among us dislikes efficiency and a smooth going comfortable life? University students use the Xerox machine in their studies. Housewives use “instant pizza” for supper. Men’s legs are fast deteriorating from the lack of the most basic human exercise, walking. Automobiles speeding at 50 miles an hour have replaced their legs. We believe in efficiency.”[6]

And yet God “moves slowly in the educational process of human beings”[7]—40 years walking in the wilderness, “three generations of the united monarchy,…19 kings of Israel…20 kings of Judah… the hosts of the prophets and priests, the experience of exile and restoration—isn’t this rather a slow and costly way,” Kosuke asks, “for God to let his people know the covenant relationship between God” and human beings?

Our reading in the Gospel of John today tells the story of just two days’ happenings. It is a slow, simple but deep walk through the Word of God. Each day’s story begins with, “the next day.” “The next day…” John was hanging out with his disciples, and he sees Jesus walking by. He says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” He testifies to the divine revelation, when he baptized Jesus the day before, saying that the whole reason he was baptizing him was so that he would be revealed to Israel. And then, “The next day….” he is standing with two of his disciples and he sees Jesus walking by, again, and he says once more, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

John’s two disciples then choose to follow Jesus. They are walking behind him. Jesus turns and speaks to them, “What are you looking for?” he asks. Little did they know that the one whom they were following was already seeking him!

This is “the divine initiative. It is always God who takes the first step,” says William Barclay. “When the human mind begins to seek and the human heart begins to long, God comes to meet us far more than half-way. God does not leave us to search and search until we come to him; God comes out to meet us. As Augustine said, we could not even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us. When we go to God, we do not go to one who hides himself and keeps us at a distance; we go to one who stands waiting for us, and who even takes the initiative by coming to meet us on the road.”[8]

His disciples don’t answer Jesus’ question directly. They ask him where he is staying. They call him, “Rabbi,” teacher. This communicates their desire to spend time with him, learn from him, and know him more. Jesus invites them to his home with, “Come and see.”

Andrew and another unnamed disciple spend the day with him, and by 4 p.m. are moved to follow him with their lives and share Jesus, the Lamb of God, with others who are close to them. Andrew goes and tells his brother, Simon, that they have found the Messiah—the one whom they were looking for. He brings Simon to Jesus, who gives him a new name to go with his new identity as his disciple. Simon will now be Cephas, the Aramaic word for rock or stone, which in Greek is Petros as in our name Peter.[9]

You and I, when we renewed our baptismal vows last Sunday, were reminded that we have taken on new identities in Jesus Christ. We are God’s beloved children, we who have decided to follow him through the wilderness that is all our lives. But here’s the thing. We may think that we have decided to follow him, when the reality is that it was Christ who loved us first and drew us to him. As Augustine said hundreds of years ago, “we could not even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us.” As we turn and seek the Lord with our whole heart, the Lord comes to meet us far more than halfway, like the first disciples.

Jesus asks us now, as we decide to be intentional about slowing down this year and as we travel through the wilderness, through the storms of life, “What are you looking for?” And, “Who will you bring to me?”

Maybe you used to bring people to Jesus, but you haven’t for a while. The busyness of life got in the way. Who will you bring to meet Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? To whom will you say, “Come and see”?

If you remember anything from today’s message, I hope you will remember the speed of our walk with Jesus. What is it? He walks 3 miles an hour, never faster, but sometimes slower. We are called to follow him, as his first disciples were, though they didn’t know it at the time, all the way to the cross.

“Jesus Christ came,” says Kosuke.

He walked towards the ‘full stop.’ He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at 3 miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving! What can be slower than ‘full stop’ – nailed down? At this point of ‘full stop,’ the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to man is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster.

Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at 3 miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.[10]

Let us pray….

Holy One, thank you for your Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Thank you for loving us first and drawing us to you. Thank you for your invitation to come and see. Help us to slow down and be more intentional about lingering with you, spending time with one another. When we move too quickly and feel overwhelmed, remind us how slow your speed is. How slow the speed of love is. You are a three mile an hour God. You are with us in the wilderness. You are with us through all our storms. Stir us to share your love and bring others ever nearer to you. Amen.

[1]“Japanese Theologian Kosuke Koyama: Theology Rooted in the Experiences of Ordinary People,” in Christian Century Magazine (May 5, 2009) accessed January 17, 2026, at http://christiancentury.org/article/2009-05/japanese-theologian-kosuke-koyama.

[2]“Japanese Theologian Kosuke Koyama: Theology Rooted in the Experiences of Ordinary People,” Christian Century Magazine, May 5, 2009.

[3] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God (UK: SCM Press, 1979 and 2021), 4.

[4] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, 4.

[5] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, 6.

[6] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, 7.

[7] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, 7.

[8] William Barclay, The Gospel of John (vol. 1) in The New Daily Study Bible series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 101.

[9] N.T. Wright, John for Everyone (part 1) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 15.

[10] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, 8.