Anyone remember a bumper sticker that seemed to be everywhere just a few years ago? “Commit random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.”

Where did that go? The prevailing norm these days seems to be just the opposite. Alarmingly, public discourse is more often marked by polarization, demonization, ugliness and fear. As songwriter Joni Mitchell once observed: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

How did we get here and how do we find our way back to genuine communities of respect and compassion? As people of faith, we turn to God, prayer, and Scripture to help us find and re-find our way. Sermons through August in the “Bind Our Hearts in Love” series will explore the Letter to the Ephesians and its many teachings for the church about how to be a community worthy of the gospel, lessons essential both to the church and to our larger community.

And, week after week, we will gather together for worship, study, and service. A new year begins in the Preschool as it celebrates its 70th Anniversary. Sunday School classes, Youth group, and Children’s Church will gather. Opportunities for fellowship and service will be in full swing. Committees will meet and plans will be made.

All the “normal” stuff of church life will be happening, thanks be to God. For this is where we learn to “practice what we preach,” creating community united in love, and through it all, witnessing to kindness, beauty, compassion, justice and peace.

Love God/Love Creation. Our Lenten journey this year invites us to examine and re-examine our commitment to be faithful and passionate stewards of God’s creation. The challenge to each of us is put succinctly by essayist Wendell Berry: “If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for not loving it or be justified in destroying it?”

How, indeed?! The environmental crisis, or creation crisis as we might put it, is at heart a spiritual crisis. As one young adult, a high school science teacher and United Methodist, reflected: “Answering to God about what has happened to God’s creation should put most Christians, me included, into a spiritual crisis.”

Throughout Lent this year, we walk with Jesus from the wilderness to the Tree of Life and deep into the darkness of the earth towards the brilliant light of Easter morn. The worship and music of the church offer us space to listen and reflect. The art in the Fireside Room, titled “KNOW, LOVE, DO–Changing Nature and Us,” provides much to celebrate and ponder. The Blessing of the Bicycles on Palm Sunday and taking stock of the environmentally-sensitive practices we have in place here at the church inspire
us to go farther along the path of responsible living. Our new sign board out front invites passers-by to add their own word of testimony and hope for a healed creation. A new meal-time grace shared around our family tables in our congregation and Preschool families gives us pause each day to live as grateful stewards.

Our April Book Study author, UM Sharon Delgado, writes: “Love makes this possible…the experience of God’s love for us enables us to face the reality of climate change and our love of God and neighbor can motivate us to compassionate action as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus.” For as the old hymn puts it: “Dear to God is the earth Christ trod. No place but is holy ground.”

Let’s walk this walk with the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.