Thanksgiving week and the Narrative Lectionary gave me Isaiah 5: 1-7 and Isaiah 11: 1-9. I think the key to this reflection is the Henri Nouwen in the middle. It is the bridge ... but it is also the fact that this is week 52 of the church year (as it relates to the calendar). This is Christ the King Sunday.
The title comes from how I open the sermon -- a scene of death and brokenness and devastation and then we have to preach on Thanksgiving? Huh?
But to return to the Nouwen ... we are who we are as a result of the lives we have lived. We need to get away from this idea of selecting this and rejecting that. All of it is makes us who we are ...