Mid-Week Message - January 28

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be always with you!

I was just saying to someone yesterday that I am enjoying a "proper" winter this year! (Yes, despite needing to shovel again yesterday for the umpteenth time since November!)  This winter - it feels like more so than in previous years - I find my breath taken away by the beauty of the world around us, trees heavy with snow and sunlight sparkling on ice crystals.

For some reason, the heavier the news becomes, the more pain that we are exposed to on a daily basis, the more my heart becomes sensitized to the "good" around me - the more I am aware of beauty, the more I revel in the kindness and generosity that I observe, the more I am open to experiencing joy.

One of my favourite writers, Kate Bowler (and if you've been around here for a while, you've heard me talk about her before), says "Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard." A lot of her writing is is around that paradox - that joy and suffering are so often intermingled in our daily experiences, either in the small mundane ways or in the big life-changing ways.

Ignoring the suffering, ignoring the heaviness of the world doesn't do anything to make it go away.  There is power in being able to say:  "This is hard. What is happening right now isn't right. What we are witnessing in the world / our community / my life right now shouldn't be happening."

And yet we can't ignore the good or the beautiful either. God created this world and to deny goodness and beauty in the world is to deny God. Every act of human love that we witness or experience is a reflection of God's presence for God is love.

Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard. And the living of life tends to fall somewhere in the tension between the two.

Moving on to announcements this week:

• Worship on Sunday will be at 9:15 at Long Reach and 11:15 at Westfield and on Facebook live.  This week, we'll hear two different readings - 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12 - and I'm hoping to weave them together to paint a picture of God's topsy-turvy kingdom. God's vision for the world is not one where positions have been shuffled, but is rather a radical transformation and re-working. But as Paul writes to the Corinthians, "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom"!

• Bible Study - we won't be gathering next Wednesday (Feb. 4) as I will be heading to the Snow Centre on Wednesday morning with Joan and some of the Long Reach Singers to lead worship there. Bible Study will resume the next week, Feb. 11.

• Queerly Beloved - our next gathering will be this Sunday, February 1, at 7pm at Westfield United Church. This is a queer-centered gathering (that is also open to straight and cis-gender friends and family members) that gathers monthly on the first Sunday of the month.

• Annual Meetings:

  Long Reach Congregation - Sun. Feb. 15, 9am

  Westfield Congregation - Sun. Feb. 15, 11:15am

  Summerville Congregation - Sun. Feb. 22, 9am

  Two Rivers Pastoral Charge - Wed. Feb. 25, 7:30pm (at Westfield)

• Ash Wednesday - Lent is almost here! Ash Wednesday is on Wed. Feb. 18 this year, and we will have an Ash Wednesday service that evening at 7pm at Westfield United Church. This is a service when we are reminded of our own mortality as we turn our faces towards the cross, yet it is also a service when we are also reminded that death is not the end of the story and Good Friday is always followed by Easter and resurrection.

• Lent - our Lenten worship theme this year is going to be "Hungering for God."  In addition to Sunday morning worship, we are going to have a couple of other Lenten gatherings on the go.  Steve, our Student Minister, is going to be offering a 6-week study on the Epistle readings from the lectionary every Wednesday at 10am in the parlour at Westfield United. And every Tuesday evening, we are going to have a gathering to pray for peace. These gatherings will rotate between our three churches (schedule to be available soon), and will involve praying in different and creative ways (ie not just words).

• Support for Natalie Thorne and family - thank you to all of you who responded to the call for assistance for Natalie and her family following a devastating house fire on Saturday night. Ticket told me that she dropped off a load of clothing plus $800 to Natalie and her family on Monday to help them get through these first couple of days.  Moving forward, clothing donations for the family can be dropped off at Rainbow Valley Childcare (24 Epworth Park Road). Financial donations should be made through the GoFundMe account that was set up for them - you can find that by clicking here.  (And because a couple of people have asked me the same question, I will answer it here. Unfortunately no, you can't make donations to the family through your church offering and have the church pass it on to them. CRA's rules for charities don't allow us to collect for a specific person or family, pass the money along to them, and issue a tax receipt. We would risk losing our charitable status number if we were to do this.)
  

Thank You Corner - this week's "thank you" goes out to Josie Pike. There are lots of things that I could thank her for, but this week's specific thank you is for accompanying me yesterday as we did a series of home communion visits together, extending Sunday's communion table to a bunch of our church members who aren't able to make it to church either in-person or virtually. Thank you, Josie, for your ministry!

(Side note - it was a delight on Monday as I was phoning folks to set up these visits to hear multiple times, "Oh, I did have communion with you yesterday on my TV/computer/tablet - you don't need to bring it to me again tomorrow." It made me smile to hear how many of you are joining us virtually when you aren't able to make it in-person, and to know that technology in this case is drawing people together rather than driving us apart.)

For a closing thought this week, I want to share a video that I watched on the weekend that may be of interest to any of you who have been puzzled by the Book of Revelation, or to any of you who are interested in Roman and Early Christian history (or especially to any of you who fall into both categories!). This video is presented by a Religious Studies scholar - is solid from an academic perspective, and unpacks some of the confusing symbolism from Revelation through the context of what was going on when it was written.  You can watch it by clicking here.

Blessings to you and yours, today and always!

Kate

Rev. Kate Jones

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

(506) 757-2201 (office)

(506) 343-1307 (mobile)

www.tworiverspastoralcharge.com

Pronouns:  she/her/hers

"Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?"

Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself."

(Matthew 22:36-39)