DAY 40

"Sculpted Coastline (Ulukhaktok, NWT) by Scott Lough

Iqaluit and Connection to Itijjagiaq Trail
Completion of The Trans Canada Trail

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A Greeting
I remember your works;
I recall your previous wonders.
God, your every path is holy.
(Psalm 77:11;13a)
(versions of psalms on today's page:
"The Complete Psalms: The Book Of Prayer Songs In A New Translation"
by Pamela Greenberg)

"Bertha Lake panorama" (Alberta) by Steve

A Reading
Listen, my people, to my teaching,
bend down your ears to the utterance of my mouth.
I will open my mouth with a parable,
express my intent
with riddles from long ago,
words we heard and knew,
truths our ancestors once told in stories.
We will not conceal them from their children,
but rather declare to later generations
praises of God's strength,
wonders the Holy One has done.
(Psalm 78:1-4)

Music


Meditative Verse
When the days drew near for him to be taken up,
he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
(Luke 9:51)

A Reflection
We don’t have to have the same backgrounds to pray together.
We don’t have to experience the same pain, speak the same
language, share the same desire or goals, or have the same
definition of “Christian”. When we pray, Jesus says, God knows what
we need before we even ask him. In that home on the outskirts of
Iqaluit, with the immense tundra for a backyard, and a blizzard,
more often than not, outside the door, I received something
I needed even before I opened my mouth.
- from "The Iqaluit Women's Bible Study," by Mary Thaler,
found on her blog sonnetchallenge.

Verse for the Day
You shepherded them, with simplicity of heart.
(Psalm 78:72)

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"Canoes in Twilight, PuvirnituqTown01, Quebec" by George

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A STORY


After arriving at the southern edge of Frobisher Bay, travelers can cross the ice on the bay or paddle it to find the short land connection to Iqaluit, the Inuit capital of Nunavut, ending our journey. After forty days of spiritual travel across the land, we have returned to the Arctic where it began. Depending on our point of view, The Trans Canada Trail begins and ends in Victoria and St. Johns, or it begins in the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories in the Arctic and ends in Iqualuit, Nunavut, also in the Arctic. Instead of orienting ourselves by the southern cities, we might orient ourselves to see the beginning and end of our land's trails as coming from the paths of its First Peoples, who came into the land from the north thousands of years ago. (And we might imagine and hope for a connecting trail to join the Itijjagiaq Trail with the southern coast of Labrador and the island of Newfoundland.) The song sung by Ontario's Inshallah choir, taken from a concert expressing solidarity with the people of Attawapiskat, Ontario last year asks the question "how long will we sing? how long will we pray? how will we make amends?" and "we sing peace across this land." In today's story, Inuit storyteller Michael Kusugak tells us that nothing is more meaningful to him than hearing his own grandchildren recite their cultural stories. What are the stories of the land that have made a lasting impression on you during these past forty days? How will you help to keep them alive and preserve them for the generations to come?

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4:37 am on the Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia (Panorama 1) by mrbanjo1138

Today marks the end of the LC† Stories of the Land Lenten devotional project.
Many thanks for joining us. (Please go here to find a full list of gratitudes.) As we all end our Lenten journey, we embark on another. The trail is over, but as Jesus sets his face for Jerusalem, we set our hearts to join him for all that is coming this week. As you enter Holy Week, may the stories you have heard here find their points of connection to the story of Jesus and the events which we observe in the last days of his life and in his resurrection.
Blessed Holy Week. Blessed Easter!

The entire Trans Canada Trail, with the Itijjagiaq Trail in Nunavut circled. (Source)

LC† Stories of the Land is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto
Join us on Facebook. Follow us @LutConnect

DAY 30

North Cape Arch, PEI by Gregory Roberts


The Confederation Trail (I)

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A Greeting
I stretch out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah
(Psalm 143:6)

A Reading
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
(Psalm 95:4-7)

Music



Meditative Verses
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence.
(Psalm 51:10-11a)

A Reflection
Peace. You never know what peace is until you walk along the
shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Abegweit
on a summer twilight, when the dew is falling and the old old stars
are peeping out and the sea keeps its nightly tryst with the little
land it loves. You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not
a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.
And you look around on the dimming landscape of haunted hills and
long white sand beaches and murmuring ocean. On homestead lights
and the old fields tilled by dead and gone generations. Even if you
are not Abegweit-born you will say “why, I have come home”.
- from "Prince Edward Island" written by L.M. Montgomery,
for a booklet called "The Spirit of Canada: Dominion and Provinces 1939,
published by the CPR in honour of a royal rail tour that year. Found on anneofgreengables.com

Verse for the Day
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit
(Psalm 51:12)

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Undated photograph by Lucy Maud Montgomery of her friend Nora LeFurgey
who is herself taking a photograph, on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island.
Found on cbc.ca

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A STORY


From coastal New Brunswick, travelers walk on to the Confederation Bridge and come into Prince Edward Island on the traditional lands of the Pigtogeoag and Epeogoitnag peoples of the Mi’kmaq, walking on the Confederation Trail. The island is home to the Lennox Island First Nation and the Abegweit First Nation. Abegweit is a Mi’kmaq word meaning “land that is cradled on waves”. In today’s reflection, Lucy Maud Montgomery uses the word 'Abegweit' as the name of the place that holds her heart. At the end of today’s video story, taken from the 1985 film adaptation of her book Anne of Green Gables, Marilla says “to despair is to turn your back on God”. This very strict theology holds a deeper struggle in the writer. As the wife of a minister, and the survivor of a very unhappy childhood, ‘Maud’ Montgomery knew a lot about despair. The recently re-published journals reveal a debilitating depression that she struggled with for most of her life. Her great comfort was in her writing and in her connection to her birth place, even when she was not actually living there. In capturing it for the royal family tour of Canada in 1939, she describes a peace of spirit in which God is present. In her journal, at the end of a childhood story about church, she adds, “And how glad I was when it was all over and we got down and out under the blue sky once more, where we could drink of the wine of God’s sunshine in his eternal communion that knows no restrictions or creeds.”(Source) It was through God's creation, and specifically Prince Edward Island, that she found peace. In a hobby of photography, she sometimes captured those dear to her on the land she loved. As a writer, she also found comfort in the invention of a character who lived in search of ‘kindred spirits’, who sought out each moment in its capacity for intense emotion, often joy. Is there a place that gives you that deep and abiding sense of peaceful connection to God?

From New Brunswick, hikers cross the Confederation Bridge on to
the Confederation Trail in Prince Edward Island. (Source)

LC† Stories of the Land is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto
Join us on Facebook. Follow us @LutConnect

WELCOME

The LC† Stories of the Land Lenten devotional project
has now finished. It ran from March 1, 2017
until Palm Sunday, April 9th, 2017.



Check back at Advent 2017 and at other seasons
of the church for daily devotions.
Blessings on your day!

Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto.
Join our Facebook page. Follow us @LuTConnect.