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I don’t remember whether it was hot or cold, but chances are good that in 1966 it was
another pleasant summer in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, one of the few, if not the
only, cities in America that changed its name to that of a popular game show.
But even if the weather were less than perfect, I discovered only a year and a half ago that it
was a unique and special time for me, the only summer in fact that I ever spent with my birth
mother.
But a little over a thousand miles away from The Land of Enchantment a mother and
daughter were melting in the blazing heat of record highs of St. Louis that summer. And to
make matters worse, an airline had stranded mom 800 miles from her home in Houston.
It has been claimed that it was to escape the heat that Kathleen decided to hop in the car
and drive her mother home, but does anyone really go to Houston in the summer to escape
the heat?!
My experience of Texas’s Gulf Coast in the summer is that the humidity is oppressive. But
the thought of mom staying for several weeks may have been more unbearable and perhaps
driving through the beautiful Ozarks would indeed bring needed respite.
I don’t really know about that, but what I do know is that Kathleen, an organist, tells us that
the thought of seeing family and very close friends at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer
in Houston was the source of such joy that she began hearing words and a compelling
melody in her head, even as her mother kept pressuring her, “Kathleen, if we are leaving
soon, shouldn’t you be packing?”
Kathleen says that as she drove to Houston, she began to work out the harmonies in her
head and then finished the harmonization at her parents’ piano.
So it happened that summer of 1966, just before I wandered back into foster care and only
months from adoption into a new family and the Episcopal Church, that another child—
nurtured in the Episcopal church and now grown was giving birth to one of my favorite
hymns which Kathleen set to a new tune aptly named “Houston.”
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I want to walk as a child of the light.
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars ito give light to the world.
The star of my life, is Jesus.
In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God.
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.
So evocative of so many scriptures including the lesson we just heard from 1 John where:
God is light
and in him there is no darkness at all. . . .
And if we walk in the light
as he himself is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another.
Kathleen Thomerson recalls that I want to walk as a child of the light came to her as she was
eagerly anticipating being with her family and with her “brothers and sisters in Christ at the
Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston.”*
I wonder what comes to your mind when life seems unbearable and you consider coming
here to be with your brothers and sisters in Christ at the Episcopal Church of Saint Stephen’s
in Forest?
Could it be that coming into this place evokes deep within us a touchstone remembrance
that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all?
When we come into this place do we too want to walk as a child of the light, to follow Jesus?
Does this place reveal the brightness of God, give light upon our path, open our eyes to see
Jesus?
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Do we come to this place hoping, even expecting, that when our race is ended we too shall
know the joy of Jesus?
Do we come here to have fellowship where the Lamb, whose blood cleanses and whose light
overcomes even now the darkness of this world?
Is this too a place of hope for you?
A place of encounter with the risen Lord?
Here I am.
Touch me.
Share life together.
Eat resurrection power.
Drink Easter joy.
Peace be with you.
Receive the Spirit.
(blow)
Mother or daughter.
Father. Son.
Brother. Sister.
Here. Here in this place.
Fellowship and faith.
Hope and wholeness.
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Light and life.
Here. Here in this place.
I want to walk as a child of the light. I want to follow Jesus.
The Lamb is the light. Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.
*Notes from the web based on Reformed Worship, Sept. 2008, No. 89 and the entry for Hymn 490 in Glover’s The Hymnal 1982
Companion: Volume Three B.