Grace, Love, and Living

The paragraphs below are from a post I started writing in February.  It was my last effort on the blog for months.  It still represents a big part of what has gone on in my life since that time.  There were other things going on in my life that I wanted to write about in February.  A few days after this, a series of events began to snowball that changed the path that I thought I had been on.  I was working slowly and steadily on getting my house in order, as described below. And then the world became aware of the pandemic.  Within a month of writing the words below, universities were closing, businesses were closing, and well...you know.  I'll put a few more words from today at the end.

February 7, 2020

I want to take a break from heartache, drive away from all the tears I’ve cried.
I’m a wasteland down inside.
In the crawlspace under heaven,
in the landscape of a wounded heart, I don’t know where to start.
But the wild geese of Mary pierce the darkness with a song
and a light that I’ve been running from and running for so long.
As their feathers spin their stories, I can still cling to my fears,
or I can run, but they come along and we both disappear
just like all…
All these broken angels, all these tattered wings, all these things
come alive in me....
All these broken angels, all these scary things, all these dreams
are alive in me. ("Broken Angels," Over the Rhine)

I'm basking in the joy of a visit from David, my son of 33 years.  He has watched me struggle to deal with my boxed up life that goes back for a decade. Some of it got packed up at the end of our children's public school years, at the time we moved to Texas.  Other parts of it come from those years in Texas, which were interrupted by the time of Everly's illness and death.  Some of it is what I packed up there to move back to North Carolina in 2014.  When I moved to NC, I had an initial burst of energy to sort and organize all the gathered fragments of a life that had drifted away.  But it didn't last, and I eventually found myself walking the maze of boxes, bins, and bags that I could not face.  It has been my hidden shame as I closed myself behind the doors and walls of my house.

God's grace of children comes in many ways, and in this time, it is David looking on his dad and realizing that the parent sometimes can't cope without a loving, helping hand.  So at Christmas break, he cleaned the house, rearranged the living room, got rid of empty boxes stacked in the dining room, and began to scheme what it would take to get Dad on his feet in a home, not just a storage building.  Then he planned a trip to spend a week with me going through boxes, getting things sorted for giving away, throwing away, recycling, and as a last resort, for keeping.  We've been working on that for a few days now. 

As I started writing last summer (2019), I had arrived at a moment when it seemed it was time for something new to happen.  I could see glimpses of living a life that I had put on hold for almost ten years.  There was a book project that had stalled when Everly's cancer took center stage for all of us.  I had not seen a path forward, but took a big step in 2018 by working on the missing parts to give as a lecture series at Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary.  A friend helped me get the book project moving by giving me access to a time share for a week last summer, and I produced a fully organized book proposal.  I took other opportunities to work on the project, and will soon be able to send a proposal with several sample chapters for consideration by publishers.

Another part of David's visit has been several very helpful conversations.  I had already begun talking with a therapist about my mental and emotional block when it came to the boxes in my house.  I had made tiny steps of progress, three or four boxes now and then.  But David's wisdom and love is blessing me in ways I could not have anticipated.  He commented about the things I was saying, "That sounds like a lot of negative self-talk going on."  Dang!  That's kind of what a Dad might say to his kid.  Of course, it was right on.

The next day I remembered an experience with my own dad.  In 1985, W.D. had landed his dream job.  Always a good fund-raising pastor, he was hired to work for his alma mater, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in the development office.  His duties were to work the Houston area, with special attention to the SWBTS satellite campus there.  He was loving the work, but his health was not responding well.  Finally, his doctor told him that the pollution in Houston was making him sick, and he was on the verge of a serious respiratory condition.  The doctor advised him to quit the job if it required him to be in Houston.  It broke his heart.  I went to visit, only to have him pour out his heart about the sadness he felt about both the health danger and about giving up the job he had wanted for so long.  He was 55 when that happened.  Now David is helping me through my challenges at age 62.  The leveling that comes with maturity has allowed a kind of give and take that I would not have imagined a few years ago.  The gratitude in my heart runs deep.

As my regular readers know, I often call on the poetry of song lyrics in these blog posts.  I'm not alone in being a person who often finds a soundtrack for my life in the songs of my favorite artists.  Anyone who has read my blog knows that Bruce Cockburn, Kate Campbell, Michael Card, Kyle Matthews, Darrell Adams, and Carrie Newcomer have been favorite poets of mine.  But in the past few months, the music of Over the Rhine has been on repeat.

A couple of years ago, I think I arrived at the conclusion that Bruce Cockburn's song, "Pacing the Cage" had become the best interpretation of my life.

Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long--
Days drip slowly on the page.
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage. 

I didn't see much left for me in life.  There were many things I had not accomplished, and I doubted I would ever have the energy to change that.  I still hoped there was more life ahead, but I just couldn't see it. I could still get energy in bursts and feel the old drive to work on issues and tasks that I had cared about for many years. I could be happy to be with my family and friends, so don't take this to mean that I hoped to die. But where my life was headed and what it might take to get started on a visionary path were seeming to be out of my reach.

At that point in the blog post, I was trying to find words to describe something new in my life.  I thought I had stumbled onto some changes that were revealing a sense of what could be unfolding. One voice had planted a seed in my mind and heart, "Mike, you are good enough." My next step in writing this piece was going to be to explain that I was thinking about how another song from Over the Rhine, "Days Like This," might speak to who I am beginning to imagine myself to be: "Days like this, you think about the ones that love you. All I want to do is live my life honestly....Every regret I have, I will go set it free, and it will be good for me." Six months later, I think it still speaks to my hopes, dreams, and possibilities.

But I was not seeing clearly how things would go and would have soon had to change my assessment of what was coming next. At least I wasn't alone in that. No one was seeing ahead clearly in the budding Ronaworld. Within a few days, my world had turned upside down in so many ways. 

As March progressed, I began planning to uproot and go to Texas to care for my Dad, who turned 90 years old in July, so that I could help keep him safe during the pandemic.  I thought I would stay two months--so many of us fooled ourselves to think it would be over by summer.  I ended up staying three months.  I never came back to this blog post until today. I did quite a bit of writing, filling up a blank book with handwritten nearly daily reflections for several months.  I had a lot of magical thinking to talk myself out of.  Then I stopped that.  I spent about a month back at my house in Durham in July, making much more progress on cleaning out old boxes and making the house livable.  I didn't finish, but the changes are already dramatic. One person asked me the obvious question during that time, "When do you think you will get back to your writing?" I'm sure I mumbled out some uncertain answer.

Now I'm in Texas in the middle of a planned two month stay.  And I'm like lots of people dealing with COVID-19: wondering how this transformative crisis should change the way I expect to live the rest of my life.  I know that when and if Rona ever winds down, it's not going to be the same world I was imagining before. It's about time I started writing again.

Loneliness and the Mystery of Friendship--Walking with the God of Pentecost

A year ago, I was taking a couple of days for exploring historical sites about the conflicts between the European settlers and the Dakota in Minnesota after an academic conference in St. Paul.  While in St. Paul, I had been with some long-time friends as well as some brand new acquaintances as part of our regional group of Baptist professors who take a weekend a year to hang out with our Catholic colleagues, talk about theology, Bible, history, etc., as well as worship and party together.

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, this time of year brings out more intense emotions for me because of various memories from my life spent with Everly, including the last weeks of her life.  Last year was no different.  I found myself deeply appreciative of the time spent with my old and new colleagues.  We worked on our academic topics together, and we also learned about one another's lives, whether as graduate students or teaching faculty.  A group of us were presenting a panel dealing with various baptist statements on sexuality which had been published in the past couple of years.  In the midst of getting ready for the panel, news kept breaking about Paige Patterson's history of sexist attitudes and sermons, as well as his overt attempts to repress reports of rape and sexual harassment in his role as seminary president.  The main point of mentioning all this is that we were keenly engaged with one another, talking about matters of significance for the church, the academy, and the lives of our students and ourselves.

As I drove up the Minnesota highways, I found myself thinking back on time with various people during the weekend.  I had been deeply moved and surprised by a new friendship that sprung up at the meeting.  I marveled at the thoughtfulness and attention shown to me by people with whom I had not previously grown a history of exchanged kindnesses.  I found myself overwhelmed by the grace of unexpected friendships during our days together.

The other side of that warmth and gratitude as I drove alone was the realization that we had all gone our separate ways, and it would be unlikely that many, if any, of those people and I would spend time together until the next May rolled around.  So there was a weight of sadness as well.  I found myself pressing deeply into my experiences of friendship, my capacity to make friends and sustain friendships.  One of the side effects of being a student through so many degree programs is that I have developed very deep and close friendships while working with fellow students toward a degree, only to fulfill those academic years by having all of us relocate and leave one another behind.  I find that I can hold on to friendships with long breaks between contacts, but that I am not so good at keeping them steadily growing by communicating regularly while living far apart.

This inconsistent communication is a flaw in my practice of friendship.  I am too easily affected by the habits of "out of sight, out of mind."  But I think there is another key factor in how I maintain friendships that has also affected this lack of communication with people who are in remote places.  While I have often had a circle of friends with whom to enjoy talking and hanging out, I am most likely to have one or two very close friends at a time, not five or ten or twenty.  That leaves me most likely to be in a close relationship with friends who are close by, to whom I have face-to-face access, and whose lives are present and connected enough to my own that we are able to maintain a deep awareness of what is happening with each other.

For over thirty-five years, from our late teens until her death, Everly was the primary friend to whom I turned and with whom I shared my life.  Depending on where we lived at the time, there would always be one, or maybe two, other close friends.  I am an introverting type of person who can find a great deal of satisfaction entertaining my own thoughts.  It is part of what helps me be a good researcher, to gain mastery of subjects, write about them, and recall extensively from stores of knowledge to use in teaching.  Hours of focused study, thinking, or writing are not nearly as taxing of my energy and vitality as an hour or so spent in a large social gathering, especially if it involves trying to converse with people whom I have not previously met and who share little in common with my areas of expertise and knowledge.  When mingling in a crowd, telling someone that I am a theologian or an ethicist is a pretty sure-fire conversation ender.  Struggling to find common ground for conversation can quickly wear me out.

By the way, Everly was pretty much the opposite.  She gained energy from social occasions.  She was likely to find her way into being the life of the party.  She maintained many more close friendships than I seem capable of doing.  I admire all these things about her, and marvel at how her way of moving in the world was so different from mine.  I often miss one of her greatest talents.  Everly could "read" the crowd.  Now while I may be able to get a sense of a room full of people's mood or bias, she could also quickly discern the demeanor and body language of most everyone present.  Most of these signals and signs go over my head or bounce off my forehead.  I often miss the tone and tenor of what is going on between people in social gatherings, including how people are reacting to me.

Because I was driving alone, I turned on some music.  I often do some of my important thinking through the poetic insights of songwriters.  On this day, I was listening to Carrie Newcomer and the Indigo Girls, both of whom have helped me think through issues over the years.  I took note of a particular song (with a strange title) by Newcomer that day, "Cedar Rapids 10 AM."  The song's refrain is an invitation to continue in friendship.  The singer is needing some time to think, and has determined to do so by hiking up to a promontory to rest, look at the sky, and mull over what is on her mind.  She wants her friend to come join her.

Will you come with me to the ridge top?
Lay all your burdens bare, right there.

It's an invitation to honesty and struggling to get through to the truth of things.  The lyrics continue to speak of the value of deep conversations between friends.

Take away all the white noise;
It getting hard to hear.
Souls stretched as thin as tissue paper
Edged with cuts and tears....

You've always been a cup of coffee;
You've always been the cream.
You've always believed that I was better
Than I could ever dream....

So much for all the chips we've earned.
So much for all the things we've learned.
So far it is still you and me.

Dealing with the erosion of a life by the daily disrespect, frustration, and longing for something more--all that can wear someone down.  That image of being stretched, with cut and torn places scattered across a tissue-thin surface, is something I can identify with.  It's a picture of wearing away one's substance until it seems little is left, and even that remnant could dissolve so easily, with just a shred of dignity and energy left.  In some moments, even one's length of experience makes little difference for understanding, like round after round of poker, gaining chips whose exchange value  you don't care about, or knowledge that makes no difference in the current situation.  Sometimes, it is only the presence of a faithful friend that can hold one together.

Last May, having seen a a valued time with friends come to an end, and sulking a bit over the state of my own life, I was feeling that, unlike the song's character, I didn't have anyone available to hike up to the ridge top and work through whatever could be on our minds.  I was having a bout of self-pity, and I knew it.  But knowing that didn't make me feel any better about my situation.  For almost five years, I had not had Everly, my "go-to" friend.  And having returned to live in Durham, I kept seeing other close friends move away, making it harder to keep that kind of presence I need when things get hard.

I started to realize that one issue for me was that in having had Everly faithfully available as my friend for such a long part of my life, I had come to take the availability of friendship for granted.  It's not that keeping a marriage friendship functioning well isn't it's own kind of hard work.  But having grown into mostly good habits of relating with one another, I hadn't needed to put out much effort to cultivate other friendships.  With Everly gone, and later some of the other friends no longer nearby, I had come upon a new challenge to make my life work well.  The kind of friendships I needed were not just going to walk up to me day after day.  I was going to have to figure out how to work at being a better friend so that I could have friends.

I realized at that point that there were a number of people in Durham who had already been generous in their friendship toward me.  There were friends whom we had known since arriving in North Carolina in 1986, with whom our family had been through many important events in our lives.  They had not pulled back from their hospitality and availability to me.  I simply had not been taking the opportunity to spend time with them and to make sure I was a friend to them as well.  Another small group of friends who had invited me on several occasions to join them for conversations, dinner, or an outing, had not put up any barriers to my seeing them more often than I have been.  As I stated above, I was becoming aware that there were people ready to be good friends with me if I would put in more effort rather than simply waiting around to see what would happen spontaneously.  And in the year since that time, these good people and I have shared our lives and hearts in what is a pleasant relief from the pattern I had fallen into.  It's what your momma or grandma always told you--don't take good things for granted.  That was one of the insights that was dawning on me last May.

But there was another very important thing I was realizing about friendship on those highways. During my drive across the prairies of Minnesota, I spent some time reflecting on the mystery of becoming friends.  It is commonplace in contemporary popular wisdom to assume that friendship is chosen.  "You can pick your friends."  I'm not saying it's a completely empty aphorism.  When a person has "run with the wrong crowd," there may be the possibility of walking away from that set of friends, but it may not be easy in all cases.  People often try to pick their friends by picking a neighborhood to live in, a school to attend, or a club to join.  These decisions do have some impact, but whether the type of friendship that allows a person to find support, honest communication, and love will come about is not so easy to plan.

There is a mystery to friendship that can't be explained by choosing who will and won't be our friends.  The Indigo Girls song, "Mystery," reflects on this hard to explain part of becoming close to another person.  It puzzles over whether friendship happens by fate or choice.  It asks whether the unplanned and unexpected coming and going of a friendship means that it never was real.  It's likely many readers have wondered about the same kinds of questions.  The person one is sure will become his best friend is just a passing acquaintance.  The person she hardly even noticed grew to be the truest friend.  Two people who might seem to be different, even opposite, in so many ways find themselves becoming friends: "My heart the red sun. / Your heart the moon clouded."

It's common in the popular theology of the kinds of churches that I have always been part of to think of our associations, friendships, and loves to be arranged by God's plan.  I've written about my understanding of the will of God in at least four previous posts, but it seems to me that such a commonly discussed topic deserves attention again and again.  I'm not inclined to think of God as a master chess player, moving all of us pieces around a board to meet some grand plan.  I did not say that I do not believe God has plans for us, which I know to be that we ought to become more like the image of divine love revealed in Jesus Christ, living in community with those who gathered to him and found bounty and healing even without a permanent home and a truckload of possessions. 

God's will for me and for you is beloved community, and we are the agents to share in the plan and the construction of a world that bears marks of God's Reign.  Our efforts are partial, local, frail and temporary, yet they are real products of the goodness, beauty, and love in which God has made us to live.  Nor do I think of God as a scriptwriter and puppeteer.  There is not a single predetermined path for all of history.  God works in history with infinite creativity, capacity to repair and heal, and patience with the failures, shortcomings, and outright evil projects that humans get caught up in.  The calling is persistent and repeated whenever we can hear it, to turn our efforts toward the good of one another, and in loving and just ways to remake the communities in which we live.  God is in the midst of the living and unfolding story.

In either image, whether the chess master or scriptwriter, God is more remote from us than the God revealed in Jesus Christ and coming in the power of Spirit on Pentecost.  In Jesus, the Word became flesh and moved in the neighborhood.  Jesus associated with everyday people, not the boardrooms and ruling halls of the elite.  He couch surfed his way around Galilee and Judea, walked confidently through the "bad neighborhoods" of Samaria, fell in with the rough crowd and got run out of Gadara, and he built a movement of the masses that made him dangerous in the eyes of the rulers.  The Spirit came to the people and gifted them to share good news in the language of all who were present on Pentecost.  There was not a booming voice from the clouds, but the many voices in many languages of people who had learned who God is by following Jesus.

I am inclined to think of God's working out God's will in ways that accord with these manifestations of God's presence.  Rather than moving a chess piece near me to become my friend, or moving me around to make a certain person be my friend, I am inclined to think of God as a caring companion, present with us, not scripting or manipulating us as a puppets.  As we live our lives, people come our way, or we come upon people in our pilgrim journey.  We will not become fast friends with everyone we meet.  But as our companion, our guide, the one who is shaping us to be more what we are made to be, God will be at work to help us discern and appreciate the allies, friends, and beloved companions who can be part of the beauty that God intends our lives to be.  It may sometimes seem like choosing, and other times an unexpected mystery.

Thomas Aquinas echoes the words of Jesus from the gospel of John chapter 15 when he says we can grow to be friends of God (Summa Theologia, Second Part of Second Part, Question 23). With God as a friend, an ever-present companion, our prayer without ceasing opens our hearts and minds to hear the gentle prodding of God. Maybe at times it is not a gentle prodding, but a strong push to move, a wake up call to see what is right in front of us, or opening our ears to hear the cry that requires our response.  In this way, God leads us into opportunities for friendship, by being the one who cares enough to get us going in the right direction, to speak up to greet someone, and to above all to listen to people.

If I think about some of my own experiences (and I'm not going to give a long inventory), there is much that is unexpected and unchosen in the process of our becoming friends.  One very close friend was a graduate school colleague of mine, but everything about our demography other than being theology graduate students worked against our becoming close friends.  However, when we each had a three-year-old daughter taking a Saturday morning dance class, dads with coffee and time on their hands struck up a friendship and found they were able to talk honestly about the most difficult things they were dealing with at work, home, and church.  An unanticipated intersection of daddy responsibilities created the groundwork for a long-lasting friendship. 

In another case, an acquaintance came to offer prayer for me one Sunday during worship, and the conversation that followed led to recognizing a deep commonality in our longing to deepen our loving relationships with our children.  If an observer judged by our different ages and background, one probably would not lay odds on a budding friendship coming from what could have been merely the formalities of performing a religious duty.  If this post were a study of all my friendships, I could easily describe other cases that could be even more unexpected friendships.

Friendship isn't strictly a choice.  It emerges out of contingent occurrences.  It comes as a gift more than as a choice.  Friendships grow as a kind of grace.  That was another lesson I was beginning to learn last May.  I can't predict where friendship may arise and grow.  Half a year earlier had met an academic colleague from another school almost by chance as we were participating in the same conference.  It was a break in the programming, so we sat down and became acquainted, learning a few things of interest about one another.  I enjoyed the conversation, but I didn't expect much to come of it. 

By May, we had met several more times.  I was surprised that someone would make that much effort to get to know me, not being in the same town, the same academic discipline, or having very similar networks or background.  By then it was already clear to me that grace was at work to allow our friendship to blossom.  As I indicated in the first part of this post, I was struggling both with needing  a friend, and with needing to be a better friend.  And here without any plan or effort on my part, a friend had walked into my life.  It's reasonable to say that I was puzzling over the same kinds of questions Emily Saliers was in the lyrics of "Mystery."

Why do you spend this time with me?
May be an equal mystery....

Psychologists and other social scientists, philosophers and theologians--we all can bring some general insights into understanding friendships:  characteristics of good friendships, the likelihood of friendships to last, the needs friendships bring, the goods friendships help to produce, the virtues that support friendship and vices that undermine it, examples of good and bad friendships.  When all is said and done, a great deal comes down to the simple acceptance of who shows up in one's life, the contingent events that get our attention, the opportunities we take to show concern for someone, the willingness to be honest and vulnerable, and the interconnection that grows from having a history with one another that has made us better people. 

I think people can reasonably put in the effort, even choose, to become the kinds of persons ready to be friends with others.  Yet there is a remainder in the narrative of friendship that is housed in mystery. Perhaps you met at that time that your soul was "stretched as thin as tissue paper," with so many cuts and torn places you did not know how you could make it much farther without someone to share the burdens.  It could be that sitting to share a cup of coffee, maybe adding some cream to soften the bitterness, led to that mysterious realization that your friend can see good and power in you that you have not been able to find--"You've always believed that I was better than I could ever dream."

I'll close out this far too verbose post with perhaps the most powerful lines of the Indigo Girls' song that say a great deal to me about entering the grace and gift of friendship when loneliness seems to be the only possibility.

Maybe that's all that we need--
Is to meet in the middle of impossibility.
We're standing at opposite poles,
Equal partners in a mystery.

Thoughts Before David's Wedding--Part 1

In a couple of weeks, my oldest child, David, will get married. He is 32, and we have all come a long way since that first day he joined us out in the air and under the stars on a night in 1986. Everly had gone to work like other days, planning to take leave soon. It was still at least a couple of weeks from the "due date," but David got ready to be born. She called, and I hurried to Nimitz High School where she was teaching so we could go to the Irving Community Hospital. It was a long afternoon and evening of waiting. The doctor was watching the Texas Rangers baseball game and joking that we had to name the baby for whoever was at bat when he was born, and the doctor was pulling for Oddibe McDowell.

All did not go as planned, and the medical staff decided to do an emergency C-Section. That meant I was not allowed into the room for the procedure. I was panicked, worried about the dangers of general anesthesia. But that process moves quickly, and soon I was brought into the operating room and shown this little, red, squinting, frowning boy and allowed to hold him briefly. Once Everly woke up again, all was well, and we started a long journey together in our sixth year of marriage. Within a couple of months, we were moving to Durham, where all kinds of wonderful things unfolded for all of us.

A while later, I somewhat reluctantly told Everly, that the moment I looked on that little baby, who came from our love and the heritage of our families, changed my self-understanding and my life more than any other moment in my life. Joy flooded and overwhelmed the room as I gazed upon little David. I explained that it was not a replacement or advancement over having met her. It was not more significant than knowing her, but at the same time it was more intense and systemically life-changing than anything else. I should add that David's birth was not more beautiful and love-filled than Naomi's reluctant and delayed journey into the world or Lydia's scheduled and efficient planned C-Section birth. The love just grows. But I was an experienced Dad by the time Naomi and Lydia arrived. David was a tsunami of grace that washed over us and our little home in Grand Prairie, Texas, and we continue to reside in that grace as he embarks on his own venture in making a family.

Prayer and Doubt, and Where We Get This Wrong

Let me acknowledge the Bruderhof community and their publication ministries:  The Plough Publishing, the Plough Journal which is brand new, and the daily emails such as The Daily Dig.  I find the quotations they send out regularly encouraging, challenging, and thought-provoking.  One of those quotations got me motivated to write today.  It is from the second-century Christian text by Hermas.

Tear doubt out of your heart! Never allow doubt to hinder you from praying to God by perchance thinking to yourself, “How can I ask anything from the Lord, how can I receive anything from God since I have sinned so much against God?” Never think like this! Instead, turn to the Lord with your whole heart. Pray to the Lord without wavering and you will come to know God's great mercy. The Lord will never desert you. God will fulfill your heart’s request because God is not like human beings, who harbor grudges. No, God does not remember evil and has compassion for all creation.

I find that in our era of "positive thinking" prayer, we have put the weight of prayer on our ability to stir up intense intellectual focus on the certainty of our own thoughts.  If prayer depends on what I can drum up in my own mind and emotions, then I am to that extent praying to myself rather than to God.

The contrast between doubt and faith does not come down to my drummed-up certainty.  We have all known people, and perhaps we have been those people, who get so stirred up around wanting something to happen that our way of talking about it leaves us sounding more like promoters than believers.  There is a kind of "faith in your team" which leads one to believe, for instance, that Duke cannot lose a basketball game.  Then there is the reimagined future of weeks not spent in the cameraderie and joy when Mercer figures out how to knock Duke out of the NCAA tournament early.  While sports fandom may be a trivial (not for everyone) example of drummed-up certainty, I hope it provides a helpful analogy to how some theology of prayer is more about personal wishful thinking turned into wished certainty rather than actual faith in God.

Too often, we make doubt and faith in prayer about doubting or believing that I will get that specific thing I want.  Such is the danger of prayer that becomes shopping at the heavenly WalMart.  Prayer, as getting God to do what we want, and thus seemingly getting God to change God's mind and stop holding back the thing we believe we must have, is not the prayer of faith.

Faith, as trust and as faithfulness, gets us closer here to what makes a prayer of faith.  It also gets at what Hermas sees as the problematic form of doubt.  A prayer of faith, shaped by the model prayer Jesus taught and the High Priestly prayer Jesus prayed not long before his death, is a prayer for God's will to be done on earth and for us to be united to God in Christ.  It is about changing us to be more what God's purpose for us in creation has always been.  Trusting God to seek our good, even when the world is going bad, is the prayer of faith.  Walking with God in faithfulness, trusting the faithful God to never leave us, is the prayer of faith.  Holding fast to God's faithfulness, even when we ourselves have not arrived at the full virtue of faithfulness, is the prayer of faith.

Hermas here says that doubt is the doubt that one can receive grace.  If God is a gracious, loving God, then Hermas says that the God we can trust does not wait for us to stir up enough goodness in ourselves to offer grace and love.  We already receive God's grace, even in our failures and sins.  The doubt Hermas wants us to tear from our hearts is the doubt that God cares to listen to us.  As my professor in seminary, Dr. Francis Dubose (author of God Who Sends) taught us, the proto-missio appears when God seeks Adam and Eve in the garden as they were hiding and ashamed.  God pursues creation with reconciling love.  It is God's nature and mission toward the world.

Doubt here is not the uncertainty or fear that I won't get the thing I want.  Doubt is not trusting God's faithfulness to reach out in love toward us.  It is giving up on prayer because we are overwhelmed by our unworthiness and we fail to understand that God's grace is God's holiness.  God is not like us--God is gracious and merciful.  God is at work to make us gracious and merciful.  That is what we must trust, and the doubt of it is we must put away.  What will the future bring?  Exactly what we decided it must bring?  Another national championship for Duke?  Those specific things are not the main thing.  The future will bring great opportunities to live in the grace and love of God with one another, reconciling and building community around the purposes of God who made us for beloved community.

Can We Be in Control?

One annual event on many church calendars is Men's Day.  As part of the Men's Day preparation, three preachers were asked to speak briefly at the Wednesday night Bible study and prayer time, all using the same text, 1 Corinthians 15:56-58.  We got our heads together to try to avoid too much repetition, and it worked well.  Thanks to Rev. Patrick Clay of Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church and Rev. Dennis Horne of Monument of Faith Church for being my excellent partners in this enterprise.  I focused on verse 56 because it gave me the opportunity to think about the relationship of sin and the law.  The focus, according to the theme, was on men, but of course the same kinds of arguments found in this sermon can apply regardless of a person's gender.

1 Corinthians 15:56-58

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I want to address the first portion of the passage, verse 56, a compound sentence which says, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”  The question I want us to consider for a few minutes is “Can we be in control?”

One of the great unknowns of human existence is death.  Everyone faces it eventually.  We watch helplessly when loved ones die.  We remain on this side of a great, impenetrable divide.  The uncertainty of death arouses great anxiety in some people.  Others are able not to dwell on such fears, and some face the inevitability of death with a kind of calm resolve and peace.

            Those who put their trust in God can often put aside their anxieties about death and rest in the hope of God’s salvation.  With or without faith, most people manage to keep thoughts of death at bay through one strategy or another.  They keep focused on living and on building security in this world.  But that does not mean that fear does not break through now and then.  Death can be a powerful shaping force in our lives, even if we keep the subject buried just below the surface of our consciousness.

            Death, or its possibility, may drive us to change our diets, to start exercising, to take various medicines, to have surgeries, to break old habits and start new habits, to take a vacation, to change jobs, to move to another climate, to improve our relationships, to pray and meditate.  Death makes us act because it is the ultimate loss of control.

            If that is true, that death is the ultimate loss of control, then perhaps we might also say that the desire and efforts and strategies that people use to take control of their lives can be ways of warding off death.  And warding off death can be a good thing.  God made us for life.

            But there is a kind of striving for control that can get out of hand.  We talk about people with a “controlling personality.”  We say that some co-workers are “micromanagers.”  And we accuse people in our lives of being “control freaks.”  We protest to people who try to tell us what to do and how to live, “You’re not the boss of me!”  There is a kind of concern for control that is not good for relationships and gets out of hand.  It may, in fact, mask an underlying anxiety about losing control.  It may be a reaction to the fear of death.

            We don’t want an untimely death.  On the other hand, death comes to all, and in the right season it can be received with grace.  But when we let ourselves get so concerned with controlling every detail of our lives and the lives of people around us, could it be that we have let ourselves be controlled by fear of death rather than by the goodness of God’s gift of life?

            The Apostle Paul wrote in this text that the sting of death is sin.  He says that death has a sting.  The sting is what hurts us.  The sting is the harm that comes to us.  Death stings us because of sin. 

            On one level, that means that if we die in sin, we face a future without hope.  Death swallows us up, and we are in the clutches of an enemy we cannot defeat by our human power.  The sting of death, in this way, speaks of dying in sin and facing judgment.   I would like to say more here, but the time is short, and I can come back around to this in combination with the next important thing to say.

            On another level, saying that the sting of death is sin means that death gets its poison into us through sin.  Sinning puts us into the atmosphere of death, the sphere of influence of death.  Death sneaks its way into our lives and pollutes them and twists them and dominates them, and it does this through sin.

            One of the principle biblical concepts of sin is our desire to control our lives without depending on God.  All the way back to the Garden of Eden story, human beings believed that they had a better plan than God.  It’s not a story about a magic fruit tree and an arbitrary prohibition from God.  It is a story about human beings trying to become sovereign over their own lives and realizing how unready and how unqualified they are to take charge for themselves. 

            We, like Adam and Eve, often find ourselves trying to take control.  We want to run things.  We want the people around us to do things our way.  Men want their wives, their co-workers, their neighbors, their kids, their siblings, their girlfriends, their buddies, their teammates, to do things their way. 

            You know the guy I’m talking about.  He can’t seem to listen to others.  He gives long speeches about how to do things (Lord, help me here, I’m talking to myself.)  He gets angry when people don’t automatically comply with his plans and his wishes.  He always acts like the expert.  He’s got a plan for you and expects you to carry it out.  If he’s a pastor or deacon, he may try to enhance his control by invoking God as his sponsor.

            In the extreme, he may be like the prominent athlete in the news who wants control so bad he breaks out into violent acts.  He can’t be questioned or challenged.  And the odds are that every church, ours included, has in its pews men (or women) who have resorted to violence to control their loved ones.  It’s wrong.  It needs to stop.  God and the church can help you get help and stop.  You don’t need to demand to be in control over others and become violent.

            One thing Paul is telling us here is that trying to fight off death by controlling everything around you is really a way of giving in to death.  Instead of pushing death away, fear of death is pushing itself into our lives.  We think we can prevent the chaos by keeping everything under control, but the chaos is working within us, pressing upward toward consciousness, fighting our love for life and replacing it with control.

            Only God is capable of guiding our lives.  So I’m not saying don’t use your gifts of leadership and administration.  I’m saying let them operate in a realm of grace and freedom and love.  Grace means letting God work through other people, not controlling other people.  Freedom means being open to changes in plans and the choices of others.  Love means listening and valuing the many people God sends into your life, with all the gifts they bring.

            Paul expands his argument by saying that the power of sin is the law.  I could spend a few weeks talking about the ambiguous concept of the law in the Bible and theology.  There are many controversies over its significance across the history of the church.  But let it suffice tonight to say that the law has a limited good purpose.  It cannot save us.  But understood rightly, it can guide us.

            Our anxiety, however, makes us want the law to be our salvation.  We think it is straightforward.  It is simple.  It is clear.  There it is in black and white on the page.  We feel that we can follow something that is in plain view.  So we sometimes wish and long for the law to be our salvation.  It is, again, a strategy of control.  And as you know, the people who own authority over the law, own the rest of the people.

            Again, you have seen this guy.  He knows the regulations.  He has told you exactly what he wants done.  He wants it done this way, no matter what good idea you think you have.  In our churches, he says that we have always done things this way and it worked for our parents and their parents and the ones that came before.  He says the constitution and bylaws of a Missionary Baptist Church tell us what organizations and officers to have, and that should be good enough to do the work of the church.  He loves standard operating procedure and prefers no variations.

            But law cannot save.  It is by grace we are saved.  The power of sin is the law.  Law turbocharges our sinfulness.  Law boosts sin’s power.  Law becomes the lever to let sin shove the world around.  The law is a club in a violent man’s hand to beat down his opponents or any who question him.  That’s not the purpose of the law.  So when sin gets it’s grip on us, we use the law to intensify our controlling impulses.

            So don’t be one of these guys.  You can be a man without being in control of everything and everyone around you.  Let God send co-workers, fellow-travelers, teammates, into your life who can bring their goodness and truth and beauty with them.  Let it be life that flourishes, not death through the sinfulness of control and the power of law. 

           God gives the victory.  Jesus gave up control as he prayed in the garden.  He laid out his ideas for a good plan, but he acknowledged that there might be other plans that would work out.  He said, “Not my will, but thy will, be done.”  He went down a path that was not in his own control.  It looked like death would win.  Death tried to sting him, but he was without sin.  The law tried to condemn him, but he was the lawgiver himself.   
           When it seemed that he would be swallowed up by death, instead, death was swallowed up in victory.  Jesus knew that the God who loved him before death would still love him even into eternity.  In the world Jesus gave us, death is not a destroyer, but a passage to new life.  He showed us the way.  May we walk in it with courage, and not succumb to our fears.

Waiting for Life to Happen

Back in November, this essay appeared as a guest post on Stan Dotson's blog, Daily Passages.

Daily Passages:  Prophetic Passage for Nov. 10
Guest writer Mike Broadway

Fellow Passengers:  This week’s Prophetic Passage (Isaiah 55:6-13) transports us to that inward place where we find ourselves twiddling our thumbs, spinning our wheels, waiting for life to happen.  The inward place may correspond with any number of outward places:  a doctor’s office waiting room, a line at the department of motor vehicles driver’s license office, a room full of people trying out for a part in a show, a bed in the dark after drinking too much caffeine.  Sometimes the place where we are waiting for life to happen is more like being trapped:  a job from hell, a jail cell, a mountain of debt, a deafening silence between spouses.

Isaiah was writing to the people of Judah in exile, far from home in Babylon.  As a displaced minority, most of them probably lived in substandard housing on marginal land.  The first generation remembered better times back home, and the new generation had heard the stories and built up the resentment that goes with being an outsider in the only home you have ever known.  It would not have been hard for these people to find themselves in that inward place of waiting for life to happen.  When will we go back home?  When will we get our piece of the pie?  Maybe after a little longer, things will start to go right.

At the very beginning of their sojourn in Babylon, Jeremiah had warned them about this kind of thinking.  He told his people in Babylon to settle down, build houses, have families, and make the most of life wherever they were.  As the bestselling title from Jon Kabat-Zinn cribs from ancient wisdom, WhereverYou Go, There You Are.  Now decades later, Isaiah speaks again into this pain in which people wait for life to happen while life is passing them by.

Anyone whose livelihood depends on the land might know this place of waiting during severe drought conditions.  The prophet describes the water cycle and the productivity of the farm to remind the people that much is happening when they may not be able to see it with their eyes.  Water disappears into the soil to do its work.  It evaporates invisibly and makes its way toward cooler altitudes to form clouds.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  More is going on than the drudgery of the daily routine.  When our eyes are fixed on the television or computer screen, a whole world of life is going on outside that tunnel of vision.  While I wait to get a new driver’s license, so many other people are getting theirs.  My moment of seeming stagnation means I am ignoring a universe of frenetic activity.  In my moment of isolation, God is present and loving in infinite worlds and ways.  Am I really destined to miss out on all that while I’m in a stuck place?

What the prophet wants his friends to remember is that their time is limited.  They do not have an endless number of mornings.  If they can’t change everything about their situation, they can at least try to find what God is doing in the middle of their little patch of the world.  Isaiah is convinced that when they start looking they will find with William Blake, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God . . . . There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”  They will find that at root, it’s all grace.  It is grace on grace on grace.  Grace all the way down.  When we’re waiting for life to happen, grace happens.  Settle into it.  Wallow around in it.  Breathe it in deep.  Go ahead on.

How about you?  Where does this prophetic passage take you on your journey?

God's Will . . . Set Forth in Christ

This sermon was originally delivered on January 3, 2010, at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church.

God’s Will . . . Set Forth in Christ

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Ephesians 1:3-14

The letter to the Ephesians contains numerous passages beloved by the church. The first chapter from which we read today is one of those places where the richness of the gospel speaks with great power. It plumbs the depths of theology and presses toward the limits of our abilities to understand the mysteries of God’s goodness and love.

Some of the themes of these opening verses include the eternal existence and supreme exaltation of Christ, election and adoption of the children of God, the abundant and powerful grace of God, Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice, forgiveness, and the wisdom of God. And that is just the first eight verses. My, my! It staggers the mind to think of the immeasurable greatness of God’s grace to us. It’s glorious grace, yes glorious. The glory of God is known in the grace of God. Grace is the crowning glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is glorious beyond measure. The riches of God’s grace cannot be measured. They cannot be valued. “Marvelous grace, infinite grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse . . . that is greater than all our sin.” Praise be unto the God of grace.

But I want to focus today on a few lines from Jeremiah [verses 11-14] and the second part of our passage from Ephesians [starting with the end of verse 8]. We’ll start with Ephesians, then look back to Jeremiah to see the visually rich description from Jeremiah’s day of what Ephesians has called the “mystery of God’s will . . . set forth in Christ.” Thus, we want to consider today God’s will set forth in Christ. Turn to your neighbor and say, “God’s will . . . set forth in Christ.”

When we talk about God’s will, it is good to take a moment to question what is going on in our lives and the world. There is a kind of false comfort we can get by assuming that whatever is going on around us and in our personal lives must be God’s will. This false comfort is very different from the true comfort we have in God when we seek to find what the Holy Spirit is doing and would have us do in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves. That true comfort comes in seeking God. It comes in the striving that discernment requires. It is very different from the false comfort that says whatever happened must be God’s will.

A few friends of mine, some of whom are former students of Dr. Turner, published a book a few years ago called God Is Not . . . . I use this book with my beginning theology students in order to point out that many things that are going on in the name of Christian faith are not a true understanding of the God of the Bible. They are more of an accommodation to the powers that be. My point is that everything that is happening is not the will of God.

I think I have a habit of saying this in many of my sermons, so it may sound familiar to you. But the reason I always seem to come back to this point is that in order to know the will of God we also need to be able to recognize what is not the will of God. Everything that President Bush did was not the will of God. Everything that President Obama is doing may not be the will of God. Every preacher that is on TV or the radio is not doing the will of God. Every big and booming church may not be in the will of God. Every small and struggling church may not be in the will of God. Everyone with a job is not doing the will of God. Everyone without a job may not be in the will of God.

If we are to know the will of God, we must know where to look for it. Every up and down of the economy is not the will of God. To press a specific point, I need to say that economic injustice—whatever form it takes, whatever economic system it occurs in, whatever country or government oversees it—is officially not the will of God. God does not will economic injustice.

The ways that the economic system went wrong in recent decades, the ways that the powerful and devious preyed on the weak and trusting, were not the will of God. If someone cheated you, or if you cheated someone, that was not the will of God. When a few people took all the profits, no matter whom they hurt in the process, they were going against the will of God. God is a God of justice who stands up to those who would oppress others. The prophet Isaiah spoke boldly to those who had grown wealthy at the expense of the poor in chapter 3:13-15.

The Lord rises to argue his case;

he stands to judge the peoples.

The Lord enters into judgment

with the elders and princes of his people:

“It is you who have devoured the vineyard;

the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What do you mean by crushing my people,

by grinding the face of the poor?” says the Lord God of hosts.

I am returning again to the topic of the economy today, even though you have heard me preach on this subject recently. I return to it because we remain mired in the struggles brought on by greed, short-sightedness, possessiveness, carelessly wishful thinking, outrageous risks, disregard of the hard-working common folk, playing with other people’s money, living the high life, wasting precious resources while many remain sick and hungry, preying on the desperate, and a multitude of other sins. Many of us have had to stand before God in the past months to ask for help and forgiveness because of the ways that we have managed our economic resources. At other times, we have had to cry out to God because of the ways that other people’s actions and decisions have harmed our ability to make a living and pay our bills. People who follow Jesus and people who want nothing to do with Jesus have had to face up to the need to change their ways and do a better job managing their finances. This is real to us, and it is not going away easily.

I also return to the economy because God has placed it on our hearts here at Mt. Level. God ‘s Spirit has told you and me to dwell on this matter and speak the truth to one another and to the powerful. God’s Spirit is speaking through this people of God concerning how God would have us move forward in times like these.

Since the economic crisis continues to affect and shape us all, then it would seem that we ought to be seeking to know the will of God for this time and place. What is the mystery of God’s will set forth in Christ for our economic situations? Our first judgment from this text is that it does not give us specific information about mortgages, televisions and cable bills, phone service, food on a budget, new or used cars, credit cards, savings, overdraft fees, and such things. Those particular issues we are dealing with are not mentioned directly. But just because the letter to the Ephesians does not use the word “mortgage” or “overdraft fee,” does not mean that we should conclude that this text is irrelevant for our economic lives.

It would be a mistake to treat this text in Ephesians as if it were merely about invisible, immaterial, metaphysical matters. That would be to spiritualize Christ and ignore the incarnation of God into the everyday existence of humanity. The gospel text for today is from John 1. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.

Certainly there is a metaphysical aspect of this passage from Ephesians. It uses the word “mystery” as well. But this does not mean that the message here is only some sort of lofty abstraction, nor that it must remain unknown to us. In fact, it explicitly says that God has made known to us this mystery. God’s will which would seem to be too complicated to figure out if we had to do so in our own power has been made known in Jesus. Another way to say that is that the mystery of God’s will is made known to us as Jesus. The first meaning of the will of God is Jesus. God’s grace, goodness, love, mercy, justice, power, wisdom, faithfulness, provision, purpose, everything which God is and is doing has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

It is the will of God that we be joined together in Christ. On communion Sunday, we are proclaiming and practicing that act of joining together. God’s will is that we would find that our purpose and meaning is known in Christ whose sacrifice and life we remember today. His ways must become our ways. His faith must be our faith. His love must be our love for one another. This might seem to great a task for us to accomplish, and that is true if we think we are to do it in our own power. But Ephesians tells us that God has done this work, gathering up all things in Christ, all things in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ delivers to us our true inheritance, what God has intended for our lives to be from eternity. It is our destiny to live according to God’s will and purpose, as Jesus did.

When we have put our trust in Christ, and when we have set our hope on Christ, then we are joined with him in the redemption of our lives together. The messed-up, cockamamy way of living that people tried to figure out on our own can be laid aside and a new way of living can be taken up. As Ephesians says, we are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit.

A mark is something to be seen. We mark things so we can identify them quickly. A mark may tell us what something is, what category it belongs in, whose it is, or what it is for. The mark of the Holy Spirit shows us to belong to God, to have the purpose of living the will of God. Now we might say that a mark put on something can get covered up with other stuff. Or a mark might get smeared. I’m not trying to say that the Holy Spirit’s seal is not effective. I’m only making a kind of allegorical, or figurative comment about how well we display the glory of God. Maybe we have put on a jacket and obscured the mark the Spirit has placed on us. A mark should be seen. If it can’t be seen, how does anyone know that it is there?

Ephesians says that we have the pledge of our inheritance. We don’t have the whole thing yet, but we do already have the mark. We are on our way to getting this inheritance. So we may not always do such a good job of letting this mark show the world God’s will. God is still working on us, but we are already set apart, marked, and categorized as being God’s own people. We now await the completion of God’s redemption, already assured by the work of Jesus Christ.

Now it might be possible to read this passage and think that it has little or nothing to do with our economic lives. But as I said earlier, that would be a mistake. The Bible is full of guidance and teaching about material possessions and money. It makes clear in very specific ways how we are to share what we have because God’s blessings come to us in order that we might bless others. So anytime we are talking about the will of God, we have to realize that God is all up in our financial affairs. God’s will doesn’t bypass our pocketbooks and bank accounts. God’s will doesn’t skip over our cars and furniture and computers. God’s will does not ignore our tithes and offering and sharing with our neighbors.

Ephesians says that all things are gathered up in Christ. That means we have to look to Christ to see how to arrange our finances and organize our economic living. Our earning and spending, our work and leisure, our owning and giving, should show the mark of the Holy Spirit. People ought to be able to recognize that we are dealing with our money and possessions in the way that Jesus showed and taught us. There is a personal and churchwide responsibility here to let God be glorified and praised for the way we handle our finances. Where is our hope? Is it in a pension fund? Is it in a big house or a prestigious car? Our hope must be set on Christ. Our redemption will not come from buying low and selling high. Our redemption comes from Christ’s work to make us God’s own people. When we are in economic harmony as God’s people, we are being redeemed.

Yes, this text pushes it farther than just me getting myself right. If the institutions and structures of economic life in the United States are not conformed to the calling that all is to be gathered up in Christ, that is no excuse for churches to set aside economic justice and say it is impossible. If no one else is paying a living wage, churches ought to be paying a living wage. If people do not have access to health care, God’s people ought to be making a way for access to health care. If banks and other financial institutions are creating conditions for perpetual indebtedness or debt sharecropping, churches ought to be sponsoring credit unions and other ways of financial sharing so that no one is in need. If the economists try to convince us that that we can trust an unseen hand to take care of everyone even if the wealthy and powerful are left to look out only for themselves, church people ought to be making their open hands visible as a witness to the ways of Jesus.

Just to add a little more confirmation to this interpretation of Ephesians, we should briefly take a look at Jeremiah 31. It is a text about redemption as well. It is about God’s gracious regathering of the people to be God’s children, God’s flock, a holy nation. In verse 12 Jeremiah gets specific about the goodness of the Lord: God’s goodness and grace is about grain, wine, oil, flocks and herds. It is like a watered garden. It is about plenty to eat for the priests and the people. It is about joy together, with dancing, making merry, joy, comfort, and gladness.

Jeremiah says “my people shall be satisfied with my bounty.” God will provide for the people, and the value of the material possessions is in the value of their shared lives. Young women dancing, old and young men having a good time—this is what is possible when we do not fixate our attention on acquiring and amassing wealth, hoarding possessions, collecting toy after toy, entertaining ourselves rather than enjoying one another. God’s purpose for economic life is that we might be joyful together. This can only be true in an economic system built on justice, mercy, and humility. Economic justice means that no one oppresses others or benefits from the suffering of others. Economic mercy means that we look out for one another and recognize that we all need a hand now and then. Economic humility means that we don’t think of ourselves in terms of our wealth as better than others because we know that whatever we have is given that we might bless others.

What is the will of God for us in this economic crisis? It is that we look out for one another, make a way when the world says no way, and join the struggle for economic justice. It is to set our hope in Christ, to believe the gospel that our redemption is by God’s grace and cannot be earned or bought for ourselves. It is to be marked by the Holy Spirit to show the world that we have been united in Christ to live a new and loving way as the people of God.

Today is the day for all of us to follow the will of God. For some of you, it may be that you have never believed the gospel, set your hope in Christ, or been united to Christ. If you are ready today to take a step down the path of following Jesus, then take up your destiny. God’s will is that we all be united in Christ and that our lives will offer praise to his glory. Come today to follow Jesus.

For some of you it may be that you have been wearing a jacket or sweatshirt to cover up the mark of the Holy Spirit on your life. You have repositioned your hope in your money or possessions rather than in the shared life of joyful love and care for one another. If you have let the anxiety or seduction of finances overwhelm your walk in Christ, then today is the day to renew your commitment to the will of God.

Perhaps you are not united to a church. It is a false gospel that says you can just be a loner Christian. Jesus calls us together to be God’s people. It’s right there in Ephesians 1:14. If the Holy Spirit is urging you to unite with this congregation, come today and enter into covenant with us to do the will of God.

God’s will has been set forth in Christ. Jesus Christ is the embodied image of the will of God. May we all be one with Christ, as the Holy Trinity is one in mutual love.