Happy New Year (on day 3 of the New Year) from St. John’s in Chuckatuck. We pray you had a safe and secure New Years’ Eve, whether you saw the year turn with family or by yourself. We hope the coming year holds a lot of possibility and the opportunity for change and return to a semblance of normal or at least closer contact with family and friends. Hopefully your New Years’ celebration has been less damp than ours – it has been very murky in Southside this weekend.
Today’s sermon – I think what I preached got lost in the translation from concept to spoken word. But that doesn’t change the truth of God’s word in scripture. Our worship began with a call for restoration of humanity to full relationship with God. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that we should sing out with gladness that God will save [all] God’s people – not a specific subset of creation but all creation that turns to God. Jeremiah reminds us that God gathers us back to relationship after we’ve been lost by our wandering. Our reading from the Gospel of Matthew was the story of Joseph taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt to avoid being killed by Herod, then back to Israel once it was safe. A reminder that God cares and wants God’s people to survive. The sermon focused on the reading from Ephesians. In our reading we are reminded that our life is a circle of blessing, at least if we look for our blessing. The blessings we understand begin and end in God and are sufficient for our salvation and continued life. After we remember our blessings in God, we are invited to pray to learn more about our relationship with God and the knowledge of God’s grace at work in and around us.
The point for today, in the changes of life God’s promises never change. As we pray for clarity the ever-present grace becomes clearer over time. But most importantly, God’s grace calls us and equips us to be successful, if we trust and follow God’s leading to the future – God’s future.
I invite your comments and likes,
Les+
Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
Watch today’s service at: https://youtu.be/xcvjuf8SueM
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