It is a lovely Sunday in October. Indeed you can sit and contemplate the beauty of God’s creation and wonder…as the Parking Attendant in Philidelphia asked me in the 90s’ ‘What you crying about Mon.’ A snapshot of many of our lives would reveal both clear skies and smooth sailing…and unlimited visibility on our horizon. The holidays are fast approaching and our hearts are warmed by the hearth of our memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas past. Our President says that we are closer to Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis…60 years ago.

Poor people pray. Our history has taught us that if God does not help us…we will remain destitute in our penury. Money and a warm and inviting home and holidays in Maine and our short history of having every earthly convenience that we both need and want…cause us to sing, ‘Everything is

going to be alright…’

Sameness is what we crave. We want our churches to be the same church we joined 40 years ago. We are happy and our lifelong friends in the pews next to us…are happy…while others wonder where is the God of the Bible…where is Jesus and his compassion and primarily…’The peace that passes all understanding.’

The peace we crave as, ‘The deer panteth for water.’ Community is vital to our happy lives. We long to have other members of our human family who care about us…and who love us.

The church is the bedrock of a hungry and needy and hurting society. There are people who are contemplating suicide as I write these words… they need a loving church. A woman is crying by the bedside of her child who is dying of cancer…and when the child awakens the woman smiles and wipes her tears from her eyes…and tells her child that God is listening to their prayers. Mom and dad have lost their jobs and are desperately searching for employment and their children are hungry…and they wish they knew of a church that they could reach out to. There is an upper-middle-class family who lives in a gated community…but they grow old…and the pleasures of life are little more than nuisances and seem to have lost their one-time excitement…as they look for something beyond this veil of tears.

There is a woman who is blind…who for the majority of her life could see…who wishes that she had a Faith Family that she could reach out to…

There is a loving Gay couple who follow the Christian path and love God…and who wonder where the Jesus of the Bible is spoken of and where they can feel at home…

There is. a loner…a person with mental illness…who has sought a place to fit in and be part of the family…and to be loved and accepted for who they are and the gifts that they bring…

We can not see the forest…for the trees…