Dear Community

We heard again this week of a local suicide and of the closeness of that person to many of us. It is at times like this that the Gospel of Jesus’ deep love and His amazing Grace extended to His people needs to be meditated on silently, whispered quietly to our hearts and aloud to each other and then shouted from the rooftops as we realize we have no other place to turn. We struggle as did the Apostle Paul and King David in understanding why these difficult and ‘hard to explain’ events occur. We know God is in charge but that thought doesn’t resonate as the proper answer when we look into the eyes of a frightened spouse, children, friends and associates. Proper answers will somehow have to wait. It is time for us to simply be present and to walk in each other’s pain.

My prayer for our community of faith is that we stop long enough to ask ourselves and those we love the most: "Do we truly believe Jesus is right here with us, no matter how hard the ordeal?" This will take time to process and my hope is we do exactly that… take time. Pray, listen, love, put arms around each other and radically give… radically give your heart. We follow Jesus. What else would we do?

The Lord is my refuge and strength,

Scott