Beloved,
Remember when our biggest worries for April 1 involved falling for an April Fool’s Day prank or joke?
Not so April 1, 2020. As Alexander complained, “it was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day,” quoted from Judith Viorst’s book of a similar name.
Tough decisions. Tougher conversations. Heavy lifting. Kids tired of our feeble attempts at home schooling. Guilt and shame and exhaustion and fear and a sense of having no control over what is about to happen. It’s all there, and the statistical models tell us it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.
And yet. A baby takes his first steps. The daffodils are blooming across the front of the corps building (and I nearly missed seeing them). Elliot Stabler is coming back to a Law and Order spin-off. The Cavs are currently winning game 5 of the 2016 basketball season (on television as I write – with game 7 to follow). A member of the congregation calls to check on the pastor. Grace.
And we remember this. In the terrible and the horrible, in the joyous and the tender, God is with us.
Information
Ohio friends. Myohiovote.com has the information you need to get an absentee ballot. Do it today so you can vote in the April 28th primary.
Resource
For the kids. Captain Underpants drawing lessons. (I know . . . )
A Song: What a Wonderful World (so amazed at how they do these)
A Prayer
My friend Dr. Paul Chilcote offers the following prayer, his adaptation of the United Methodist Morning Prayer of Thanksgiving:
A Prayer
New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up in us desire to serve you, to live peacefully with our neighbors – by complying with social distancing and by worshipping safely in the security of our own homes – and to devote each day to your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.
His full article, “Worship in the Great Adaptation” is available at
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