Resurrection and Life. March 29, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 11:1-45

Lazarus is dead. And one of Lazarus' sisters, Martha, can’t make sense of it. She can’t make sense of it because she knows that Jesus loved Lazarus. And she knows that Jesus loves her. Yet when they really needed him he didn’t come, at least not in any timely manner. And now Lazarus - her beloved brother, and likely her sole provider and protector as well - is dead.

Lord, if you had been here!

It’s the first thing out of Martha’s mouth when Jesus finally decides to show up. “Lord, if you had been here!” Did Jesus hear anger, grief, confusion, fear? Probably all that and more. Because I know when I or others have made similar cries to God they are loaded with layers. Lord, if you had been here...my loved one would not have died. Lord, if you had been here, my ability to pay my bills would not have died. Lord, if you had been here...my marriage, my sobriety, my dreams for the future...would not have died. Lord, if you had been here!

So what do we do as people of faith when Jesus, who we hopefully know loves us - and not just loves us passively, but as our Bishop Susan is wont to say, loves us fiercely - what do we do when God who loves us so doesn’t show up in our lives and save the day? Perhaps Martha can show us the way as she goes to Jesus and pours out her distress.

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus tells her. Cold comfort for a grieving sister. Likely it rang in Martha’s ears as a hollow religious platitude along the lines of, “Don’t be sad, he’s in a better place,” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” or “Don’t worry, this is all part of God’s plan.” Martha was a woman of faith. She already knew that her brother would rise again in the resurrection on the last day. But what she didn’t know was that’s not what Jesus was talking about here. Jesus wasn't offering some far off hope to grasp, but a present reality to live. The truth that right there and then, in the present moment of Martha’s grief Jesus was, Jesus is resurrection and life. Even though circumstances hadn’t changed on the outside - Lazarus was still dead and Martha had no idea what was coming - her encounter with Jesus changes her on the inside. Something shifts or opens in a way so that she is able to say, “Yes Lord, I believe.”

Jesus is the resurrection and the life in all times and in all places, for sure. But that truth, and the peace that comes with that, can only be known to us in the present. Martha experienced it, amazingly, in the midst of her grief. We too can experience it right now, no matter what this moment holds for us. For it is only and always in the here and the now where we find Jesus as our resurrection and life.

Is that what you want? I know I do. I not only want resurrection and life I need resurrection and life, especially in these unsettled times. So if you are like me, I invite you to join in seeing that need, that desire, as a gift. A gift of the Holy Spirit prompting us to pause more often in our disrupted days, seek Jesus in the moment and trust God’s resurrection and life.

That’s not to say that resurrection and life protects us from all harm - as in “Lord, if you had been here…” everything would be ok. It’s quite telling, isn’t it, that the one who is himself the resurrection and the life is not protected from harm and, in this account, is deeply affected by human grief and loss- so much so that Jesus joins the mourners in weeping for Lazarus. And in doing so his tears make our tears holy.

But even tearful or worrisome times Jesus remains the resurrection and the life. And we can trust that nothing, not the powers of pain or fear or even death, as real as they are, can stop the spirit of God from working her ways in our lives and in our world. For God’s love - God’s fierce love - will always bring forth life from death.

“Those who believe in me,” says Jesus, “even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Together, for we are one in the Spirit, let us answer with a resounding “Yes!”

Yes, Lord, we believe!

We believe in the one who meets us in this very moment. The One who is our resurrection and our life.

Virtual Sunday Worship. March 29, 2020

Virtual Church

Prayers for March 29, 2020

COOS Children's Sunday Time - 9:00am

Midweek Message from Fr. David, March 25, 2020

Midweek Message from Fr. David

March 25, 2020

We are the church - a reflection by Carolyn Voldrich. March 23, 2020

Drive-by photo on Sunday, March 22

Here is the church,

There is the steeple,

Open it up…

And see all the people.

Stopping in the church to process mail and checks for our Grab A Bag and Salvation Army Dinner Teams is an eerie experience. The building calls out for its people. That would be us.

You. Me. We are the church.

Always called to love. March 22, 2020 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 9:1-41

Why does there always have to be someone to blame? In recent memory, we have heard one prominent televangelist tell us that the devastating earthquake in Haiti was wrought by God because of that island’s “pact with the devil.”Another well-known Christian preacher proclaimed that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on the sins of New Orleans. I was living in New York City back when the AIDS epidemic first struck with lethal ferocity and I heard too many Christians opine that God was punishing the gay community. And beyond the big public examples, I have listened to people in my office tell me that some disease or catastrophe in their life was God’s way of inflicting punishment on them. And such thinking is obviously not new. Some Old Testament writers espouse it, and, apparently, so do the disciples of Jesus. Meeting a man born blind, the first thing they have to say is, Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Who’s to blame? Clearly, God must be punishing someone.

It’s a terrible view of God and egregiously awful theology, so I am happy to note that Jesus will have none of it. During his ministry, he is literally surrounded by sick people, and he encounters suffering to a degree most of us never do: lepers, epileptics, demoniacs, maimed people, crippled people, blind people, deaf people, insane people. There are scenes in the Gospels that read like horror movies. But Jesus never once lays blame on anyone. He never says, “Oh, this disease is a result of your sin” or “God is punishing you by making you sick.” Every time he encounters a suffering person — every single time — he heals that person. 

So in the Gospel today, when his disciples try to play the blame game, Jesus quickly stops them. For him, this man’s blindness is an opportunity to love, a chance for God’s works to be revealed. Period. In a way, this might disappoint us. Jesus never explains why God allows disease and suffering. He never gives an answer to the vexing problem of natural evil. Clearly he thinks that it is either unimportant or simply beyond us. What he does make clear is that sickness is always and everywhere a way for God’s works to be revealed. And those who love God will embrace that.

So I have no idea why God allows pandemics, just as I have no idea why God permits suffering of any kind. What I do know, and what Jesus teaches, is that we are always called to love. In our current situation, that obviously means caring for people who are sick, supporting the work of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers, and protecting our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable, from infection. I am heartened by all the people in our parish who are doing those very things, just as I am encouraged by all those practicing social distancing to help our society as a whole minimize the effects of this disease. In doing so, we are following Christ.

But there is more to it even than that. Caring for the weak and the hurting among us is not just a way to love like Jesus. Doing so is a primary, if not the primary way we will experience God in our lives. We might wish for mountaintop experiences and brilliant theophanies, but what Jesus teaches us and shows us is that the glory of God Almighty is chiefly revealed in simple acts of love and mercy. You want to feel close to God? Take care of someone who is ill. You want to experience the movement of the Holy Spirit? Be kind to someone who is hurting. You want to see the face of Christ? Look into the face of anyone who is sad or sick or dying. Nothing reveals the glory of God more than one frail and fallible human being helping another frail and fallible human being. I think I could spend the rest of my life meditating on that truth and not exhaust the wonder of it. And it’s that truth I commend to you today.

Virtual Sunday Worship. March 22, 2020

Virtual Sunday Worship

March 22, 2020

Prayer Concerns

COOS Children's Time 9:00am

COOS Church Office Update March 19, 2020

March 19, 2020

In consultation with the Rector and Senior Warden, we have decided to close down the church office and work remotely as of Friday, March 20. We can still take incoming calls to our church phones and keep in touch through email:

Scot Jonte - scot@cooscville.org

Carolyn Voldrich - carolyn@cooscville.org

Emily Rutledge - emily@cooscville.org

Kathleen Sturges - kathleen@cooscville.org

David Stoddart - david@cooscville.org

Likewise, watch for parish-wide emails with messages and virtual church from clergy on a regular basis. Don't forget the COOS blog (cooscville.blogspot.com), website (www.coosonline.org) and Face Book page (Church of Our Saviour, Charlottesville VA).

Thank you to all those helping our Food Pantry with meat purchases - we are asking that you drop off directly to the Food Pantry in the Mission during their operating hours (Mondays & Wednesdays 12:30-2:00pm and Fridays 10:30am-12:00pm). Thank you, everyone, who has offered to run errands, make & deliver meals, and assist others. You all are sharing Christ's love with the world and it's a beautiful thing!

Peace,

Carolyn Voldrich

Parish Administrator

Video Message from Fr. David, March 18, 2020

VIDEO MESSAGE FROM FR. DAVID

MARCH 18, 2020

And the beat goes on. A reflection by Carolyn Voldrich.

Dear Friends, 

We often joke that there is ALWAYS something to do in the church, and that's true even now. 

Some basic operations are still going on during this time of social distancing and hand sanitizing – the phone calls (which have been many!), package deliveries, and regular service maintenance continue (like fire extinguisher checks, coffee delivery, chapel termite inspection).  Especially now, communication is a big issue, and so Face Book posts and parish-wide emails need to get out on a regular basis. Then there are resource notebooks to organize and update…I personally can’t wait to get hold of the Buildings & Grounds Manual! Scot & I are also planning to bite the bullet and clean & polish all the hand bells that the choir didn’t have time to do last fall.

Even while our clergy and CY&F Minister self-quarantine, they are doing the most important work of pastoral care for ALL of us. If you think they’re great at what they do and who they are, you can’t imagine how awesome it is to work with them!

The COOS Food Pantry is open and serving those in need. We’ve gotten a lot of calls about hours of operation, so we anticipate a surge in clients over the next week...which could be an issue.  Sylvia Sundin, who coordinates FP volunteers, is looking at other ways to get food out to clients without congregating in that small waiting space. Like everything else these days, it’s a fluid situation.

Lawrence Henson, our sexton, has been very busy sanitizing every inch of every pew in the church and chapel, as well as all tables and chairs in the Parish Hall and Trinity Hall. He typically doesn’t have time for large projects like these – even in the summer. Look for our space to be sparkling the next time we are all together!

Daniel Grotz practices the organ every morning. He’s kind of tweaked about it because there is the time and space to do this. And we love listening to him!

All in all, we are in good spirits and really appreciate your loving thoughts and prayers. Please give us a call if we can help coordinate needs you have at this most trying of times. Because the beat goes on...thanks be to God!

Peace & Love,

Carolyn Voldrich

Parish Administrator

The gift of living water. March 15, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Exodus 17:1-7

The future is uncertain. Anxiety abounds. It is an extraordinary time, indeed. But I’m not talking about the world of today. I’m speaking of a time roughly 3.000 years ago. A time when the people of God, recently freed from slavery in Egypt, find themselves wandering in the wilderness. A wilderness where water, or more precisely the lack thereof, becomes the most pressing of issues. The Israelites are thirsty. So thirsty that their tempers run hot directing their outrage towards Moses, their leader. But surely what is fueling their angry outbursts and threats of violence is a rising fear. Fear that a basic need would not be met. Fear of losing control. Fear of an unknown future. And ultimately, fear that after all they had been through with their God that now God had abandoned them. “Is the Lord among us or not?" they cried.

Now because hindsight is 20/20, the answer to that question is obvious to us. We can see that the Lord was indeed among them and that the Israelites had no need to fear. And that God was not only present, but also responsive to their need. For when Moses brings the people’s concerns to God, God takes charge instructing Moses to go to the rock at Horeb and to use his staff to strike the rock so that water would come out and the people could drink freely and quench their thirst.

Many consider this a miraculous event. Imagining that God created the water out of nothing. And that may be so. God is perfectly capable of doing that. However, we do know that it is natural for water to flow in and through rock formations. And given that, perhaps this is not an account of a miracle in the sense of God bringing forth something out of nothing. But rather a record of divine intervention where God reveals to the people the life that was already in their midst. Moses’ act of striking the rock enabled what had previously been hidden to surface so that the Israelites could see and know and experience it for themselves. Which makes me wonder that maybe the wilderness may not be as desperate a place as one might initially think. Just like the presence of water coursing through rock formations, God provides gifts of life even in the most desolate of places.

Still life lived in the wilderness is never easy - it wasn’t for the Israelites nor is it for us. For the wilderness is not limited to a particular time or place in history. Whenever things are uncertain, precarious or feel potentially threatening that is wilderness life. And that is the life we are moving into right now during these extraordinary times of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are times where we likely will experience great thirst. Not necessarily for water, but thirst for safety, thirst for certainty, thirst for control - and as we practice social distancing, thirst for community. And just as it was with the Israelites, when thirst is not immediately quenched fear can bubble up causing us to question, “Is the Lord with us or not?”

One big challenge of wilderness living is keeping the faith especially in the face of fear. To radically trust what we already know, but now have the opportunity to know more fully and more deeply. That God is faithful and good. God will not abandon us. And God is present in all places and in all circumstances - even now, especially now.

Someday we will have the luxury of hindsight to see exactly how this was the case. How God revealed gifts of life and love in the midst of this wilderness time. And really I am already seeing glimpses of this as many in our community have contacted the church with ideas of how we might support one another in the coming weeks. But this journey is into uncharted territory where we are called to walk by faith not by sight - believing, trusting, knowing that just as God provided and cared for us in the past God will continue to provide and care for us now. Our task is to stay grounded in that assurance of faith. And to remain open and ready to receive the gifts of life in these challenging times. One way we do this is to be aware of our thirst. For when we thirst - in the many and various ways that we may experience that - it gives God the opportunity to quench us with the gift of living water. The living water that Jesus speaks of in the gospel of John where he says, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" (4:14).

For God is continually pouring out the Holy Spirit into our lives - the abundance of Christ’s life, Christ’s love, Christ’s presence gushes in us and through us meeting our deepest needs and uniting us with God and each other. For even though we are not presently able to gather in body we are one in the Spirit. And God’s Spirit will always find ways to make life and love flow - even in the wilderness. So drink up and thirst no more.

           

 

COOS Virtual Sunday Service 3/15/20

March 15, 2020

VIRTUAL SUNDAY OFFERING

Featuring an introduction by Fr. David, Collect of the Day, reading in Exodus, homily by Mo. Kathleen, and closing prayers.

Special thanks go to John Gilliom for making this possible.

An Urgent Update from the Rector. March 11, 2020

Dear Friends, 

I just wrote to you this morning, but events are moving quickly and I need to update you. As of this afternoon at 2:00pm, Bishop Susan Goff has officially closed down all public worship in the Diocese of Virginia for the next two weeks. She also strongly urges all churches to exercise caution about holding any other church gatherings. So I am canceling all worship services for the next two weeks. That includes two Sundays, March 15 and 22, and two Wednesdays, March 18 and 25. In addition, I am canceling all other church gatherings for the same period of time. That includes WAC, Men’s Bible Study, Exploring the Word, Refresh, Conversations in Faith and the March Vestry meeting. All choir rehearsals will also be canceled. This is effective through Wednesday, March 25. The bishop will give us further direction by that point about how to proceed.

In the meantime, the church office will remain open. Mo. Kathleen, Emily, and I will be available for emergency pastoral visits, phone calls, and emails. We are also investigating ways to offer a digital presence for the parish on Sunday mornings while we move through this time of social distancing.

The goal of this, of course, is to help slow the spread of COVID-19, protect people who are most vulnerable to it, and help keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. This is an extraordinary time and it requires extraordinary measures. It also reminds us that we are truly a community, deeply connected to each other and dependent upon each other. As we go through this together, I pray that a spirit of love, patience, good humor, and hope will prevail. In other words, I pray that the Spirit of Christ will flow freely among us. And I know she will.

With love,

David +

The one thing that does matter. March 8, 2020 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 3:1-17

Some of us attended Sam Sheridan’s ordination to the diaconate yesterday up in Herndon. It was a magnificent affair, conducted with all the pomp and ceremony the Episcopal Church excels at. And at the center of it all, leading worship, was the bishop, dressed in a brilliant red chasuble, crowned with a colorful miter, carrying the crozier — the shepherd’s crook, showing her to be a pastor of God’s people. If you’ve ever been here when the bishop has visited us, I’m sure you can picture it. So, do a thought experiment with me. Imagine the bishop (and it can be any bishop, not necessarily Bishop Susan) taking off her chasuble and miter, then laying aside her crozier. And then envision her driving at night to the PACEM shelter to talk with a young, homeless street preacher who has been attracting large crowds and performing miracles of healing. The young man talks to her about being born from above, born of the Spirit. He conveys the wonders of God’s activity in the world.  And the bishop responds, “How can these things be?” And the homeless preacher says, “Are you a bishop in the Church of God, and yet you do not understand these things?”

I don’t know what Gospel passage unnerves you the most. Maybe it’s the one about plucking out your eyes or chopping off your hands if they cause you to sin. Maybe it's the one where Jesus tells the rich young man to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and then leave everything to follow him. But for me, this passage from John is one of the most daunting of all Gospel stories. It shows with such vivid clarity how easily religion can get in the way of God. Nicodemus is a seriously religious man. He’s a Pharisee who rigorously keeps all the commandments — all 613 of them laid out in Torah. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council. He is a teacher of Israel, a man steeped in the faith of his people, respected and admired by others. And he is completely lost. When Jesus speaks of the Spirit, Nicodemus struggles to follow him. When Jesus tells him he must be born from above, he gets bogged down in crude, literal thinking — Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born? He doesn’t understand any of it, prompting Jesus to say, Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

I am a priest of the Church, and I love the Church: the community, the rituals, the doctrines, the sacraments, the traditions — I love them all. But they don’t matter at all unless they point us to the one thing that does matter. We must be born from above, we must be born of the Spirit. Not in a one-off event, but in an ongoing, perpetual process of realizing our unity with God and each other in Christ, a unity grounded and expressed in love.

Religious practices can, surprisingly, unfortunately, get in the way of that. This is a particular danger in Lent, when we can become so fixated on what we are giving up or what we are taking on, that we forget why we are doing it at all. Sure, we can give up dessert for six weeks or we can read more devotional books every day, we can leave our altar bare and stop saying the A-word, but if it doesn’t help us love more, if it doesn’t open us up more to the movement of the Spirit in our lives, what’s the point? 

Religion that is alive in the Spirit moves beyond outward observance to the vital truth. To be born of the Spirit is to see that the Eucharist, for example, is not just a church ritual, and it’s not just that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus. The Eucharist demonstrates the staggering truth of the Incarnation: that God has entered fully into the material reality of the world. And as result, everything is infused with Christ: eating bread and drinking wine at church; hugging a loved one; caring for a sick person; listening to the birds sing; going to the DMV to renew your driver’s license — it’s all holy because it’s all filled with God. The Spirit moves through the sacrament of the altar to show us that the entire universe is sacramental. The Spirit moves through the ritual of Holy Communion to help us see that we are not only one with Christ, not only one with our fellow parishioners, but we are in communion with the whole of God’s creation, with every person, raccoon, oak tree, and star — all enfolded in the same infinite love. With the Spirit, we see this and we live this. Without the Spirit, none of it will make any sense. Like Nicodemus, we will be left wondering, How can these things be?

The good news is that God is self-giving love and so God is continually pouring out the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is always moving, always calling us to new life, deeper life, better life. God is never done with us. Whether we are 25 or 95, we can continually be born of the Spirit as she blesses us and renews us. The adventure lies in the fact that we cannot predict how the Spirit will do that: she blows like the wind and we cannot control her. She may push us into new experiences and unexpected relationships. She may wake us up so that we see the world in a whole new way. She may help us to care more for the people around us. She may blow away our defenses and leave us gobsmacked and speechless. I can’t stand up here and tell you how the Spirit is going to move in your life, how the Spirit is going to lead you into greater love and deeper communion. I just know that she has and she will. And we can trust that.

All of which leads me to the positive value of religious practice. When we come to worship with open minds and open hearts and hear the story, and offer prayer, and share in the peace, and get fed at the altar, or when we fast with right intent or pray with desire for God, we are giving the Spirit room to blow mightily in our lives. We are saying yes to being born from above. And no one rejoices in that more than Jesus himself. In this Gospel today, Jesus does not condemn Nicodemus; he loves him. And Nicodemus eventually moves from being an anxious inquirer to being a faithful follower, a sure sign of the Spirit blowing in his life. And what Jesus conveys to him, he is trying to convey to us. I picture Jesus leaning in to Nicodemus and with radiant eyes saying, “I know you are sincerely religious, but God is so much bigger, so much more awesome than anything you have conceived of. The life God wants for you is so much richer, so much more beautiful than anything you have imagined.”

There is only one way to conceive of it, only way to imagine it.

We must be born from above.

Original mercy. March 1, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Genesis 2:15-17,25; 3:1-8

It was years ago. My eldest son, Matthew, was very young at the time probably around age two or three. We were playing hide and seek. And when it was his turn to hide he would scurry over to the corner of our living room, put his hands over his eyes and stand there in plain sight. He thought he couldn’t be seen. Clearly, he was mistaken.

And he’s not the only one. In our reading from Genesis, Adam and Eve are pretty much doing the same thing. But sadly, this isn’t a game. They are hiding because they have just eaten what was forbidden, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they are ashamed.

But let’s take a moment to back up just a bit. The world in all of its God-given glory has just been created. In this second story of creation, the rivers come first, then the trees, then a man, then animals, birds, and finally woman. All of creation finds its culmination when man and woman, named Adam and Eve, are together. “And,” Genesis tells us, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” Yes, this verse is about physical nudity, but that’s the least of it. What’s most significant here is that in the beginning human beings were created to have no barriers between one another. No hiding. No faking. No shame. That was the plan - for Adam, for Eve, for us all. But that state of openness and authenticity only lasted for so long because, as the story goes, one day a crafty serpent strikes up a conversation with Eve and suggests that perhaps God is not as trustworthy as one might think. So after mulling it over, Eve takes the forbidden fruit, eats, and gives some to Adam who also eats.

And in that act everything changes. Many theologians claim this is the moment that sin entered into the world, calling it “original sin.” That because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience their state of sin is now passed down from one generation to the next. But oddly enough, sin is never mentioned here in the story. What is, is shame. Before this event, Adam and Eve were naked and we are explicitly told they were not ashamed. But now, after this act, they are. And how do we know? Because immediately they cover and hide - both clear indicators of shame. The world has indeed changed.

A word about shame. It’s different than guilt. Guilt focuses on behavior, as in, “I made a mistake.” Guilt is that uncomfortable feeling we have when we know we haven’t lived up to our values. And when that’s the case, guilt is a good and appropriate response which can spur us on to positive change. Shame, on the other hand, puts the focus on oneself. Instead of, “I made a mistake,” shame says, “I am a mistake.” And that feeling of being fundamentally flawed is intensely painful and paralyzing. Rather than spurring us on to change it does just the opposite. It shuts us down.

Because what do we do when we feel shame, whether we are Adam, Eve, or anyone else? We cover and hide. We decide which parts of us to let others see and which parts to conceal. In today’s world that can look like putting on a happy face or posting enviable pictures on social media. It may take the form of over achieving, over consuming, or over criticizing. The ways we try to hide ourselves from others and from God are endless. And they all work just about as well as loincloths made of fig leaves and taking cover behind a bunch of trees.

Which is where our reading ends with Adam and Eve covering and hiding from God. But what happens next is that God pursues them. God seeks them out in their shame - not in anger or wrath as in, “How dare you?!?!”, but with the question, “Where are you?” As if God didn’t already know. But that question is an invitation - an invitation to repair the relationship. Because at its core sin is the breaking of relationship. And what God is doing here is asking Adam and Eve, and all of us really, to trust enough to come out of hiding so that relationships can be genuinely restored. Not that everything can go back to the way it was, but by moving forward there is healing and hope. As it is with Adam and Eve. Just as they are about to leave the garden and head out into the big, wide world God knows that fig leaves just won’t do. They need more. So God becomes seamstress and dresser to the two of them as Genesis records further on how, “the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them” (3:21).

Ultimately, this story of our beginnings isn’t about original sin or even original shame, but about original mercy. God’s great mercy that creates the world and creates us in hopes that we might fully live - without any shame, with nothing to hide, with no need to ever feel embarrassed, inadequate or lacking. But when things go awry, when we sin, because we all do, we do things that break relationships with ourselves, with others, with the world, with God - when that happens God’s mercy always seeks us out with love and forgiveness. 

As we enter into this season of Lent, God’s mercy is calling, “Where are you?” It is an invitation to a time of sacred honesty, to trust enough to come out of hiding - because really who are we kidding here? Our attempts to hide who we are from God are just about as effective as standing in a corner with our eyes covered thinking we can’t be seen. When the truth is that God not only fully sees us but fiercely loves us. So much so that God simply refuses to give up on us until we are the ones who are able to see the fullness of original mercy that abounds in our lives, in the lives of others, and in all of creation.