In recent days we’ve received a bunch of good news regarding our public health situation. There are vaccines that are getting administered (in spite of challenges), the rates of infection are going down, and it looks like we are soon going to be able to gather in more ways.

In spite of these positive developments, and even though the weather is signaling all sorts of new life, I still find myself feeling stressed out much of the time. I think it’s because so much seems totally beyond my control. Even when things are getting better, it doesn’t feel good to think (or know) that there is very little you can do to make an impact on a hard situation.

I think that one of the things I am trying to do during this Lenten season is to acknowledge that I am small in the face of the big problems in the world. Maybe with that acknowledgement I might also be able to open myself up to being subject to God’s power in the world – trusting in that power and letting it guide me. 

I hope you all are staying safe and also finding ways to center yourselves in God’s peace during these uncertain times. We will try again to do this when we gather in worship on Sunday. Please join us. 

Faithfully, 

Hardy

P.S. We are celebrating communion this Sunday, so remember to come to worship with bread and a drink.

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

“A seventeenth-century motto may provide a helpful perspective: ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei—the church reformed always to be reformed according to the word of God…. Both church officials and dissenting elements within the church imagine that implementing organizational or programmatic changes will reform the church…. However, the Latin is passive voice. The church is to be reformed, to be acted upon, to be the object of reform, not its subject.”

—Rev. Dr. Joseph D. Small,

Director of the PCUSA Office of Theology and Worship, 1989–2011

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.