7.13.25 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

Scriptures: Genesis 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 13:1–13, 1 John 4:7–21

I wasn’t allowed to say the word hate growing up.

Not even about broccoli.

And I tried. Believe me, I tried.

But it didn’t matter.

Hate was off-limits.

My mom would gently, firmly correct me every time:

“We don’t say hate.”

It wasn’t just a parenting rule - it was a value.

Words shape the world. 

And hate, once let loose, rarely stays small.

I didn’t understand it then. But I do now.

Because we live in a world where hate is not only spoken, it’s applauded.

Where politicians and public figures win approval by hating boldly and proudly.

Where enemies aren’t just disagreed with, they’re dehumanized.

Where fear becomes fuel, and hate becomes policy.

And I wonder if, sometimes, we forget who we are.

I know there are many ways Christians have tried to describe the human condition -

including the idea of original sin, the reality that we are born into a world already bent and broken.

Or in the more reformed traditions, we talk about the “total depravity” of all humans. 

And there is truth in these concepts. 

But here’s what I also believe… and what I want to lift up today:

I believe our story doesn’t start in sin.

It starts in love.

Genesis 1 says that we were created in the image of God

all of us - formed in divine likeness.

Before there was failure, before there was a fall, there was blessing.

God said “Very good….”

We are not a mistake.

And no one is. Everyone is Beloved.

Before we ever got lost, we were made good.

Before we broke anything, we were blessed.

Before we sinned, we were named “Beloved.”

Genesis tells us that we are made in the image of God.

Every. Single. One of us. 

Even the people we don’t like.

Even those we disagree with.

Even those who do terrible harm.

I believe in that beginning.

I believe in original blessing.

And I believe that the love of our creator and our original Goodness is more true - more lasting - than our failures. 

That’s not to say sin doesn’t exist.

It does.

We wound and betray and abandon one another.

We hoard and divide and destroy.

But that is clearly not what we were made for.

We were made in love. By Love. For love. 

We were made to love God, neighbor, and self - with our whole beings. 

Theologian Shirley Guthrie defines sin by saying simply that:

“Sin is not loving and not being willing to let ourselves be loved.”

Sin, then, is not just doing bad things.

It is refusing to live as people made in love, by love, for love.

It is forgetting who we are: image-bearers of a loving God.

It is denying the image of God in our neighbor.

And that’s where hate comes in.

Hate refuses the image of God in others.

It justifies harm.

It breeds violence.

It declares someone less-than, unworthy, disposable.

But the gospel says otherwise.

The Gospel says that Everyone is God’s Beloved.

Now let me be clear:

Scripture tells us to hate evil.

Romans 12 says: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.”

Psalm 97 says: “You who love the Lord, hate evil!”

We are right to resist injustice, to oppose cruelty, to speak out against harm.

But we are never told to hate people.

Even those who do great wrong.

Even those we fear.

Ephesians 6 reminds us:

“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.”

Jesus said: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.”

Yes, we are to hate what is evil.

But we are to love those who are caught in evil and sin  

- because we are, too.

The cross is not about vengeance. It’s about redemption.

And that redemption reaches even those we fear, even those who wound.

Because if it doesn’t, what hope do any of us have?

Because here’s the truth we don’t always want to admit:

Sin isn’t just out there, in them.

It’s in us, too.

Not always on purpose.

Not always through obvious harm.

But we participate in broken systems.

We benefit from injustice.

We act in fear when love is called for.

As our tradition teaches, we are not just people who sometimes sin—

We are sinners.

Even our best intentions fall short.

Even our striving toward goodness is incomplete.

As Romans 3 puts it: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

But Romans goes on to say:

“God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

That’s why hate can never be the answer.

Because if we start hating sinners, we’ll end up hating ourselves.

And God doesn’t.

God doesn’t hate us.

God sees it all—every failure, every harm, every bit of self-deception—

and still calls us beloved.

1 John 4 tells us that “God is love,” and that “those who love are born of God and know God.”

It goes even further:

“Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brother or sister are liars.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

If we hate, we do not know God.

If we dehumanize, we do not know Christ.

If we write people off either as groups

- by race, religion, political party, nationality, sexuality, gender, or criminal records –

or as individuals for any other reason….

we have forgotten our own belovedness.

Because everyone—everyone—is God’s beloved.

This isn’t about ignoring evil.

It’s about resisting evil without becoming it.

It’s about remembering who we are—

and who they are, too.

Our closing hymn today is:

“They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

But… is that what we’re known for?

Are we known for our compassion?

Our humility?

Our willingness to see the image of God even in those the world casts aside?

I find that line deeply convicting.

Because it doesn’t always ring true.

Not in the headlines.

Not on social media.

Not even, sometimes, in the church.

When you look around, it seems that Christian’s are more often known for

our exclusions,

our anger,

our entanglement with power…..

But we are not called to be known by our opinions.

Or by who we vote for.

Or who we’re against.

We are called to be known by our love….

What if, when people saw a Christian,

they expected kindness?

Healing?

A fierce commitment to justice, and a tender care for the hurting?

What if when people needed community and care and love, they immediately and without hesitation went to the closest Christian or church they could find?

What if we reclaimed faith from the sin of hate—and became people of unapologetic, extravagant, radical, visible, unmistakable love?

What if that was our witness?

Let us remember who we are and who everyone is:

People made in love, by love, and for love. 

and let us help one another live as if it’s true.

Because it is.

Amen.

7.6.25 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

Today, we’re continuing our sermon series on some of the basics of our faith. 

In the first week, we remembered that at the heart of everything, God is love.

Last week, we explored how that love creates a beloved community - a vision of human relationships rooted in dignity and compassion.

This week, we’re widening the circle even further.

Because God’s love isn’t just for humans. 

It embraces all of creation - the earth, the creatures, the rivers, and the sky.

This world is not a disposable backdrop for the story of humanity. 

The entire world is sacred ground.

It is all beloved.

According to Genesis, in the beginning, when God shaped the dust into a living being and planted a garden, the story of Genesis says that God placed the human there to till it and keep it.

Not to exploit, not to discard, not to Lord over it,

but to belong to it…

to steward and tend what God had called good.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to learning about the world itself.

I’ve always loved to read and most of the time, I read theology - books about faith, scripture, the long history of people trying to understand God.

But every so often, when I need to clear my head

or when the questions feel too heavy,

I reach for something different.

That’s when I read science books – any book about how the world works.

Physics, biology, astronomy, books about galaxies and microbes and everything in between.

And I realized not long ago that even when I’m reading about the expansion of the universe or the daily life of snails, I’m still reading about the same things:

Who is God? Who are we? And what are we all doing here?

Science and Theology are just two ways of asking the same questions.

Two ways of trying to remember that this world is more than just useful. 

It is holy.

I’ve also found that some of my best sermon inspirations aren’t found in books at all.

They happen when I’m just walking around our yard, paying attention.

Watching the crickets and frogs hopping about,

or the turtles slipping into the coulee,

or the fish rising to the surface for a moment before disappearing again.

Sometimes I take pictures and post them on Facebook—just to share a little of that wonder.

It’s a kind of preaching without words.

A way of reminding myself, and anyone who cares to look,

that this world is shimmering with God’s presence

if we’ll only slow down long enough to see it.

Some of the great theologians have said that God has given us two books—creation and scripture.

That the beauty and order of the world are like a first language in which God speaks to us.

And that Christ and the scriptures are the second expression of who God is.

John Calvin called creation “the theater of God’s glory,”

and said it shows us glimpses of the divine, if only we will look.

Our story in Genesis insists that we are not separate from creation.

We are formed from the humus—the same root as the word “humble.”

We are earthlings made of earth, breathing God’s own breath.

We were never meant to live as conquerors on this planet.

We were meant to live as part of God’s Sacred World. 

But even in that first garden,

there was a tree whose fruit was not for us to take.

Creation has always held both beauty and consequence.

The goodness of creation was never the same thing as the absence of danger.

From the beginning, the world was alive—full of possibility, full of risk.

God’s intention was never that the garden would be a safe little enclosure for our convenience.

It was a place of freedom and choice,

where love meant respecting limits that we did not set ourselves.

Sometimes the same sun that makes things grow will scorch the fields to dust.

The same life cycles that give life will also take it away.

But that doesn’t mean the world is bad.

Or that it is disposable.

It means that the world is dynamic.

That, like us, there is good and bad within it.

It also means that it is not ours to control.

If we look back over the long arc of history, it’s clear how often the mindset of domination has shaped the world.

Empires have set out across oceans, claiming new lands as their own, often without a second thought for the people or the creatures who already called those places home.

Forests have been burned to the ground to harvest a single crop.

Rivers have been dammed or poisoned or drained dry to feed our hunger for more….. more land, more profit, more power.

But is this what God intended for us?

Is this what it means to be formed from the dust, to be given breath and placed in the garden to till it and keep it?

Or is there another way? One rooted not in conquest but in care,

not in endless taking but in gratitude and respect?

We have often forgotten that the same Word who became flesh, was the Word through whom all things came into being. 

The Gospel of John says it as plainly as any scripture can: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

If that’s true, then every leaf and river, every creature and cloud carries the fingerprint of Christ. Creation isn’t disposable. It is beloved.

And the story of salvation is not just a story about saving individual souls.

It’s about God’s love poured out for the entire earth.

The rivers and the fields, the creatures and the soil….

God’s redeeming work stretches as wide as creation itself.

Romans 8 speaks of creation groaning - as if in labor pains - for this redemption. 

And we don’t have to look far to hear the groaning. Just a few days ago, the Guadeloupe River rose up in the dark of night…. Wreaking havoc and heartbreak in its path….

The world is groaning. And so are we. Because we are part of this creation, woven into its beauty and its sorrow.

When we see tragedies like this, it is tempting to turn away or to give up.

But even in our heartbreak, our calling has not changed.

We are still invited to live as people

who tend and keep,

who watch and protect,

who love and honor this earth and all who call it home. 

We can’t stop the flood or quiet the storm,

but we can stand with those who mourn.

We can remember that our care for creation is also a way of caring for each other.

We can ponder our own place in this beloved creation:

Are we part of it? Formed from the dust, breathing God’s breath, endowed with a calling to steward and tend?

Or do we see ourselves as something set apart, with license to use the earth as we please?

It isn’t always simple.

The choices aren’t always clear-cut.

Sometimes what seems like tending in one moment might later reveal unintended harm.

Sometimes what looks like dominion is done out of fear or need.

And yet, the questions remain:

What would it look like to live in a way that sustains life beyond our own lifetime?

What would it look like to give back to the land and water that nourish us, so that others (human and non-human) can flourish too?

What would it look like to stay present to suffering, even when it’s inconvenient, to remember that our neighbors’ pain is part of our shared life?

In a world that often tells us to take and consume, what would it mean to remember that we belong to each other—and to this earth?

There are many ways to live.

Some treat the world as disposable, as something to conquer or control.

Others remember that this is sacred ground.

That we are guests here.

That our calling, as best we can discern it, is to care.

The good news is that the same God who formed us from the dust and called us to tend the garden is still at work.

Still redeeming. Still reconciling all things.

The Word became flesh not to help us escape this world but to heal it.

To dwell with us in the midst of it.

To show us what love embodied looks like.

So we don’t have to live by the myth of domination.

We don’t have to keep pretending that more consumption and more exploitation will somehow satisfy us.

We don’t have to keep pretending that the world is here for our taking instead of our tending.

Instead, we can remember that creation is a gift: God’s first gift to us.

We can choose to live like it matters.

We can learn again to delight in the beauty around us,

to grieve what is broken,

to hope for what can still be restored.

Because this world - this fragile, aching, stunning world - is not disposable.

It is the beloved work of God’s hands.

And we are not its masters.

We are its caretakers and its stewards.

May we have the courage to live as if that is true.

Amen.

6.29.25 – Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

This is week two of my summer sermon series, where we are walking through some basic tenets of our faith.

Last week, we built the foundation on which all our other beliefs rest: that God is love.

This week, we are trying to understand a bit more about God’s vision of love for the world -

what it looks like when that love takes shape among us. We call it God’s Beloved Community.

And the Holy Spirit worked the timing out just right for this conversation, because this is the week when we celebrate the birth of our nation -

a time when we remember the story of our country, give thanks for its blessings, and reflect on what it means to belong.

It is good to celebrate where we come from.

It is good to love the place God has planted us.

It is good to pause and give thanks for the blessings we enjoy - blessings that many in the world still long for.

It is good to remember the sacrifices made so that others could live with dignity and the hope of peace.

Love of place, of land, of shared memory - these are good gifts.

Gratitude for freedom, for community, for opportunity, these things are all worth honoring.

But even good things can become distorted.

There’s a quiet shift that can happen - often without us noticing -

when our love of country becomes the measure of all things.

When God’s favor gets painted red, white, and blue.

When faith is fused with power, the cross is draped in a flag.

That’s the danger of nationalism:

the belief that our nation is somehow uniquely chosen by God,

that its success proves God’s blessing,

and that our version of faith should rule the public square.

It turns Jesus from the Savior of the world into a national mascot.

And when that happens, faith loses its power to challenge us.

It becomes a mirror reflecting back our own preferences

instead of a window through which we glimpse God’s kingdom.

But Scripture tells us a different story about God’s vision for our life on earth.

The prophet Isaiah offers a vision of many peoples, many nations,

streaming toward God - not to conquer or claim,

but to learn, to lay down weapons, to walk in peace.

He writes:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Notice what Isaiah doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say one nation will rise above all others.

He doesn’t say God’s mountain is the exclusive possession of a single people.

He doesn’t say only those who look or worship or speak the same belong there.

Isaiah sees a future that runs counter to the logic of empire and exclusion—

a future where all humanity gathers in the name of peace,

where competition is replaced by cooperation,

where weapons are repurposed to feed and to tend.

Centuries later, Paul writes to the Galatians:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

In Christ, every division is undone.

Every hierarchy dismantled.

Every wall torn down.

And generations after Paul, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the struggle for civil rights, he reached back to this same vision and gave it new language.

He called it the Beloved Community - a community where racism, poverty, and violence are replaced by reconciliation, justice, and peace.

Dr. King said:

“The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community.”

He believed God was drawing a circle so wide there is no outside.

A circle were no one left our or left behind.

Where no one deemed unworthy or less worthy than another.

Friends, I also want to say this plainly:

Nationalism is not just a political ideology.

It is a kind of idolatry - a false god that demands our loyalty but cannot save us.

It promises security and belonging, but it leaves us more fearful and divided.

It asks us to trust in power rather than grace.

But there is a better way.

A deeper belonging.

A truer hope.

Jesus calls us out of the shadows of these false gods and into the light of God’s Beloved Community - a community where our worth is not measured by citizenship or power, but by the love of the One who made us.

Of course, just because God’s Vision, God’s Beloved Community includes all nations doesn’t mean that we don’t have nations right now.

Of course, we all do live in nations.

And we do need laws and borders to order our civic life.

There is nothing inherently unfaithful about processes for citizenship or policies for immigration.

But as Christians, we are always called to wrestle with how those laws reflect - or fail to reflect - the deeper call of the gospel.

And I also want to acknowledge that questions about borders and citizenship are complicated.

Nations do need policies to manage who can enter, who can stay, and how we live together.

And reasonable people can disagree about what those policies should be.

But as followers of Jesus, our task is to hold all those decisions - no matter which side we stand on - up to the light of God’s love.

We may disagree on immigration policy.

But scripture leaves no doubt about how we are called to see the people behind the headlines: the immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and the ICE agents, the police officers, the elected officials -

We are to call all of these people our neighbors.

They are all bearers of God’s image.

And God loves them just as much as God loves us.

Even when a law says someone must leave,

we are never excused from treating that person with dignity.

Even when a person’s job is to enforce the laws we disagree with,

we are never excused from treating that person with dignity.

Even when a policy draws a boundary,

we are never relieved of our call to love.

We are called to remember that our first citizenship is not in any earthly nation but in the kingdom of heaven.

And in that kingdom, there are no outsiders.

No disposable lives.

And maybe one of the simplest ways to know whether we are following the gospel or bowing to the idols of nationalism is this:

When we hear the words “God bless America,” can we also say—without hesitation—

God bless Iran.

God bless Israel and Palestine.

God bless Russia and Ukraine.

God bless the nations we fear and the nations we love.

Because the nature of God, as Creator of all, is to bless all of creation.

To long for peace and flourishing in every land.

And our call as Christ’s disciples is to see no enemy so hated that God’s grace does not reach them.

If our faith can only imagine blessings for us, it isn’t faith in Jesus.

It’s faith in ourselves.

But if our faith dares to imagine God’s blessing for all peoples,

even - or especially- for the least, the lost, the stranger, and the foreigner -

that is the beginning of the Beloved Community.

And that is the beginning of true peace.

So, as we live in this tension –

grateful for the blessings of our U.S. citizenship and mindful of our civic responsibilities to our nation - 

we also hold tightly to our truest allegiance –

which is to the One who breaks down all walls and makes us all one.

And let’s be honest: this isn’t easy work.

It is so much simpler to draw lines.

To sort the world into “us” and “them.”

To believe that our way is the only way.

To let faith serve our comfort instead of challenging our assumptions.

But the gospel doesn’t call us to what is easy.

It calls us to what is true.

To what is holy.

To what is just.

It calls us to the mountain of God, where all nations gather.

Where swords become plowshares and weapons become tools of nurture.

Where true peace is not the prize of the powerful but the gift of God.

So yes - let us celebrate the good.

Let’s sing the patriotic songs we love.

Let’s decorate with flags and pray God’s blessing upon our nation.

Let’s also remember the sacrifices that have made the freedoms we enjoy possible.

But let’s not let the celebration end there.

Let it lead us deeper –

to gratitude that does not stop at our own borders,

to compassion that dares to love even our enemies,

to justice that refuses to privilege some over others.

Let our love of country be a doorway to loving the world God so loves –

a world where no one is forgotten,

no one is cast aside,

no one is called unworthy.

Because the gospel truth is this:

God’s love knows no borders.

God’s mercy cannot be contained by any flag.

God’s embrace gathers all the world into belonging.

May we have the courage to step out of the shadow of our false gods

and into the light of Christ, who alone is worthy of our ultimate trust.

May we have the courage to build God’s Beloved Community together -

on earth as it is in heaven.

And may our witness always be one of peace, of reconciliation,

and of Love that will not let any of us go.

Amen.

6.22.25 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

I wonder what image of God you first internalized.

Maybe it was from a song—

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

A melody you can still hum without thinking,

promising love at the heart of it all.

Maybe it was from a picture book—

Jesus with a lamb on his shoulders,

a shepherd, gentle and kind.

Maybe it was God as a parent—

arms open wide, waiting at the door to welcome you home.

These were the types of images that formed my understanding of God….

And they have served as foundational beliefs for who God is and who I am and who I believe that humans are called to be in this world….

This morning, I hope to set that foundation for us. And then over the next several weeks, I’m planning to explore more about what it means to worship and follow the God who is Love.

But we have to start with this foundation – that God is Love – because far too often, God is depicted as something else.  

And if we start with the foundation that God is anything other than Love, then we skew our images of ourselves and of the world and of our relationship with God and the world.

So maybe your first understanding of God was not that of love…

Maybe it was God as judge.

God as distant.

God as angry.

God as the one keeping score,

watching for you to trip up,

waiting to punish.

I remember a friend in middle school who came back from summer camp different.

My silly, happy go lucky friend was suddenly very serious. And Afraid.

She’d been told that unless a person “gave their life to Christ” in exactly the right way,

they were bound for hell.

She had said the words her summer camp leader had told her were necessary for salvation, but she was desperate to save us—her friends—

because her foundational image of God was like that of a cosmic bouncer,

standing at the gates, eager to turn people away.

It was during this time that I learned that I had other friends who also believed that God was keeping track of every wrong,

every tiny slip.

One told me that she would lie awake at night,

replaying the day in her mind,

trying to confess every little thing,

terrified that she might have missed one.

And I remember hearing that…

and feeling horrified.

Because that wasn’t the God I knew.

That wasn’t the God I trusted.

It felt a little like when someone the world had lifted up as a hero

turns out to have done something terrible.

It was disorienting.

Like you couldn’t trust what you thought you knew.

That’s how it felt to hear people speak of God that way.

It made me wonder—

Had I misunderstood?

Had I gotten it wrong all along?

But that is not the God I had been taught to believe in.

That is not the God who is Love itself….

When we look at what scripture we can find verses that can be used to support the idea of an angry, score-keeping, divine war-monger.

My friends were fond of quoting:

“Depart from me, you who are cursed…”

“Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

“If you will not obey… all these curses shall come upon you.”

People have used these verses to paint God as harsh and cruel—

But those words were never meant to terrify us into submission.

They were meant to call us back—

to compassion,

to justice,

to love.

The sheep and goats?

It’s a parable about seeing Christ in the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned.

Revelation’s lake of fire?

It’s the destruction of evil so life can flourish.

Deuteronomy’s warnings?

A call to build a community where no one is forgotten, no one is crushed.

And this is not two gods—

an Old Testament God of wrath, a New Testament God of love.

There is one God.

The scriptures I picked for today are two well-known passages (one from the OT and one from the NT)

Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside still waters;

He restores my soul.”

That’s not a bully.

That’s not a bouncer.

That’s a shepherd—guiding, providing, restoring.

Even in the valley of the shadow of death,

the shepherd is there.

The rod and staff?

Not weapons to strike you down.

A Shepherd did not use those to beat his sheep into submission.

They’re for protection, for guidance,

for keeping us safe, for bringing us home.

And what follows us?

Not wrath. Not shame.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

In Luke 15:

The prodigal son, trudging home with a speech in his mouth:

“Father, I am no longer worthy…”

But before he can even finish—

before he can beg or bargain—

the father runs.

Runs down the road.

Wraps him in an embrace.

Celebrates his return.

The whole arc of scripture tells the same story of Love:

This is the God of creation—

who looked at sky and sea, bird and beast, and called it good.

Who shaped humanity from dust and breathed life into us.

The God of the flood—

not delighting in destruction,

but grieving over human violence,

and setting a rainbow as a promise: never again.

The God of the prophets—

who cried out for justice,

pleaded for mercy,

longed for the people to return.

The God of the psalms—

our shepherd, our refuge, our steadfast love.

The God of the gospels—

healing, feeding, forgiving, welcoming.

The God of Revelation—

making all things new.

Wiping every tear.

Welcoming people from every nation into the city where the gates are never shut.

From beginning to end, and all along the middle,

the story of scripture points to the God who is love.

God is not a cosmic bully.

God is not a divine bouncer.

God is the shepherd who seeks.

The parent who runs.

The healer who binds up wounds.

The One whose power is mercy.

The One whose glory is grace.

We hear again and again that Love is the way.

And that Love is the why…..

If it isn’t Love, it isn’t what God is.

As I look around the world today, I think that some of what we’ve gotten wrong is that we have the wrong view of who and what God is….

When we think of God as a divine bully, we end up living in terror.

But if we trust in the God who is love, we can lay down that fear and

rest in the love that has already claimed us.

When we think of God as a divine scorekeeper, we find ourselves scrambling to earn grace—

but if we simply receive grace as a gift of Love, that changes everything.

When we think of God as “Love that wilt not let us go”, we can indeed “rest our weary hearts in God…”

And we can trust that all our sins and wrong-doings are forgiven. We can extend that to others in the ways we forgive.

When we think of God as the King of Love (as we will sing later) we can imagine what a Kingdom built entirely on Love might be like.

As we wrestle with all the goings on in the world.

As we interact with friends and neighbors.

As we seek to find our place in this world and in our community,

what we believe about the God who created us, matters.

We have to get the foundation right or the whole building will crumble. Buildings can not be stabilized on shifting sands. If there is a crack in the foundation, then a building will crack or twist and distort.

But when we build our house of faith on the rock that is the God of Love, then it can withstand all the storms of life, our faith will not become twisted or distorted.  

The story of God – the story of God’s people – our story, and therefore what we based the entirety of our life and faith on is Love…

The heart of all things is love.

The ground of all being is love.

Love is the way.

And Love is the why.

May that love heal what fear has broken in us.

Love is the song that is leading us all home.

May we all listen to and, indeed, join into the singing of Love’s Song for us and for the world.

Amen.