Greetings!  

  

   It's a joy to connect with you right now. The timing is perfect.

   How so? Well we've lived a week filled with all sorts of events haven't we? And, now we can pause together to say, "Thank you God for the gift of life and for this very moment."

   It is the grounding in that reality - mindfulness about the gift of life and God's presence in each and every moment - that keeps us on track when things go badly. We saw a CNN interview with a 70-year-old woman the other day. The lady lives on the sixth floor of an apartment building that has no services (no electricity, no heat, no gas, no water). Since the storm, she's made two daily trips to haul water and other supplies up six flights of stairs to her apartment. She wears several layers of clothes and sleeps beneath a mountain of blankets to stay warm. We don't know why she hasn't gone somewhere else to wait until services are working again. The reporter didn't ask. What the reporter did ask was, "How are you managing to deal with this?" Her answer - "God. Things are bad, but I'll get through."

   We were reminded of that story when we read next Sunday's gospel lesson - Mark 13:1-8. Some folks might read this apocalyptic passage as one that was talking about events our here and now (rather than the here and now of Jesus'). That's certainly a way to read this piece and other passages in the gospels and Revelations. The folks at the Rapture Index sure do. They say that it's time to fasten our seat belts because God's going to step in and end this insanity any day now, an "any day now" that's been coming for thousands of years.

   Maybe it's just us but we don't think that's what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about the events of the day, asking his disciples (and us) to take a good look at what was going on around them and to see past them. This conversation was not set in some happy time when  folks were hanging out at The Big Rock Candy Mountains. On the contrary; Mark wrote his gospel somewhere around the time the Temple was destroyed, a time when there were plenty of phony-baloney preacher/prophets suckering people in, there was plenty of murder and mayhem to go around, and famines and earthquakes and such. 

   That's exactly why we find Jesus's words so soothing. You see, we hear him telling us to acknowlege the lousy stuff that's going on all around us, the death and destruction, the misery, the devastations, and our own pain and heartbreak and know that we'll get through it. We hear God calling us to step through all of our "stuff" so that we might fully connect with our Creator and embrace others to make God's dream a reality.

   Then there's Paul, a brilliant guy who said whatever he needed to say to get people to do what he wanted them to do. In Hebrews 10:11-25, he gives his readers a pep talk about hanging in there because "the Day (is) approaching." 1 Samuel 2:1-10 is also a call to remain steadfast knowing that God will make good on God's promises. And finally, Daniel 12:1-3 offers the very first promise of the resurrection of the dead (Click here to read an interesting commentary on the Daniel passage.).  

   We hope that you'll share your thoughts/feeling either by dropping Steve a note [address below] or by joining us for GodTalk which meets in the second floor chapel at 85 Grand Street (aka The Brick Building), Newburgh, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday evening. We begin with some catch up time followed by centering music, prayer, a reading of the gospel and a no holds barred conversation. We'll be pleased to have you join our merry band (use the link below to let us know you'll be coming).