While I’ve been doing work to prepare for worship on January 24, I’ve also been spending time viewing videos and reading articles related to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our new President and Vice President. This most recent transition in leadership holds a lot of historical significance because of the individuals involved, but also because our country has experienced so many difficulties recently.

In fact, all of us who love this country must be concerned about what will happen as we try to navigate a pandemic that still rages, as we try to recover from so many deaths and illnesses, so much loss of work and everyday life. This is all before we figure out how to reckon with the terrible political violence that has taken place at our nation’s capitol and in so many other parts of the country.

The task of moving forward is daunting for all of us. We rightly wonder how we could possibly make things better. Where do we find hope?

Come join us in worship as we ask these questions—and maybe even find the beginnings of some answers in a surprising and irreverent story from scripture.

With hope in Christ,  

Hardy

Join us immediately following worship this Sunday for Coffee Hour

After the service is over, log on to our Zoom coffee time at:

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

of such a terrifying hour,

but within it we found the power

to author a new chapter.

To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

From “The Hill We Climb,” Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.