Author: Fr. John Chagnon

I’ve played music…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 2 Comments

from a least the time I was in elementary school and even performed from time to time since then. Piano, violin, mandolin, guitar, bass, ukulele, vocals, all of them at one time or another were part of my musical life. Music was always just there, inside, outside, in my head, and flowing through my life.

In the lean years, especially during high school, it was my comfort in those uncomfortable times when I hid in the band room and played piano instead of facing where and whom to sit with during lunch. Out there was a place where I didn’t really belong, in the room with the piano I was safe.

College came and the music took a back seat for a bit but then after seminary in those painful first years of ministry it came back again, an old friend come to comfort me as my prayers flowed through my fingertips in song. From then it has never left and in my early 30’s I encountered the instrument that changed everything.

I had always wanted to be in the band but for the sake of shyness, the fear of other’s ridicule, or the people in my life mentioning the sheer impracticality of it all, such things never seemed to happen. I would play for small groups and at church but mostly it was about me alone with everything from the inside finding an outside with my songs. At a friend’s urging I borrowed the money and purchased my first bass, a black and white Fender Jazz and a small amp actually made for a guitar.

It took a while to teach my fingers to find the spots but they did and then the spirit of the instrument began to capture me. I began to love its sound and its place, the rhythm, the solidity that only bass notes can provide, and it opened up doors. The time for being a virtuoso guitarist had, perhaps, passed but there was always a need for a bass and I had one. I could be in the band even if it was for playing the instrument no one wanted to play but everyone needed.

And out I went, first playing by myself and trying not to irritate my wife or frighten the cats, then on to the local jams, and from there into small groups. I still recall the almost dreamlike sense of realizing that here I was on a real stage making music with real people and what I had too often enjoyed alone was being shared. It’s an addicting thing, really, and I can see why famous musicians, when they are not on the stage, could contemplate drugs to replace those short two or three hours when there is nothing better than making live music.

The instrument became a part of me and I could slap, or pluck, or tap, or mute, whatever I needed and sometimes, because it was a bass, I could just thunder to the point where the motion of the music was like a second heart beat. Perhaps it was the instrument that no one else wanted to play but there were, and still are, times when I  don’t just play but feel the music and it’s everything to me in that moment.

Yet, being a bassist also means you need other people in ways that some musicians don’t. Bass is a team instrument, vital to the group but very alone without it. On the stage it’s a glorious rumble, in the quiet of the practice space it can be notes without the larger context. And did I mention that people, especially musicians (myself included) can sometimes be very quirky. One band fell apart because the guitarist lost the use of his hands. In another someone, and I think it was after being overwhelmed by seeing the inside of my church, decided I was wasn’t a good “fit” in his evangelical band and off I went. In between there were tryouts, tryouts that were masked as jams, and moments where there was promise and then promise found a way to be dashed.

I understand. The life of a Priest is very different from the life of a musician. I couldn’t always make the kind of promises that are the mark of being in a band like Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent and all the potential time changing emergencies and fluidities that happen when you work in the Church.  For some, too, there is just something about the “vibe” of having a Priest in the band and, again, I get that. Sometimes that means I feel alone and outside even if I know that I could knock it out of the park with the right bunch of folks. But the truth is that I would try, even if I weren’t a Priest, to live this Christian life as best as a sinful person can and Jesus would always come first even if I never wore a collar. I owe Jesus that much, at least, for all the grace, forgiveness, and mercy that comes to me daily from His hand and, in the end, it is before Him, and no band or record company, that I will stand.

So I juggle my life with that in mind. God first, family second, music third. Some day, of course, I’d like to be in an ongoing and vital band. There’s nothing like it. Until then I pick up a jam when my schedule allows, perform as a solo on the uke when the opportunity presents itself, and share my music with the Seniors who live where I work. Every so often the longing, and I have to admit this, for the limelight beckons and a certain sadness sets in thinking about what could, should, or might have been. Still, there’s a different kind of light that calls out to me. Long after the lights on stage have gone out this Light will remain and there is nothing that can extinguish it so I choose to be wherever it shines and let everything else fall where it may.

As I Limp…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

from place to place, not in agony but rather with the kind of nagging awareness of the disintegration of my right knee over the past few years, there are times when I wish I could be one of those fortunate souls that is miraculously healed.

I imagine standing at the Liturgy or in some moment of prayer and feeling something change, a warmth maybe or some kind of sign and then feeling the pain disappear with the later befuddled confirmation of my doctor via MRI. I know it can happen. I believe it can happen. There’s still time before my operation in October for it to happen. Yet, it hasn’t happened.

It’s not that I haven’t thought of bargaining with God or one of the Saints about this. I have. It’s also not that the whole thing hasn’t been frustrating at times. It has. I’ve had doctors shove needles deep into my knee with chemicals they hoped would help. I’ve had moments when I felt the whole thing on the verge of giving way. Sometimes its even hard to find a way to hold my legs in place to sleep. If there was a test to see how much ibuprofen was in my blood I’d be interested in seeing the results. How wonderful it would be, I think at times, if one day, one moment, God would grant the mercy of a miraculous healing to me and I wouldn’t have to face surgery, weeks of rehab, and the realization that in 10 or 15 years I may have to do it all over again when the replacement needs replacing.

Still, I have no intention of cursing God and dying. My osteoarthritic knee is a reminder of my own aging and mortality and I need that from time to time to help sort out the really important things from the junk. My bum knee has also made me much more aware of the reality of life for many of the Seniors I serve in my “day job.” It’s one thing to theorize about their pain and challenges and it’s quite another to have a little direct experience. It’s also a great reminder to try to stay in some kind of reasonable shape if, for nothing else, to just be able to walk.

Still, I miss dancing and I don’t like being weak from time to time. I regret not making better use of those days when all was well. Sometimes,  it just stinks for no reason in particular and my patience with the whole thing can quickly wear thin. As the date for surgery looms closer and I’m really not looking forward to those days when I’ll need to force myself into therapy and be stuck at home while the rest of the world goes by.

So yes, I suppose there is still time for a miracle. Yet God will also be with me in all the times ahead, a presence I don’t deserve yet one freely given to me out of a love beyond my depth and that, in itself, is a miracle I’m already experiencing whether or nor the unction “takes” in the way I had hoped.

 

A Few Days Ago…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

I read an article in the news that estimated around 44 percent of American homes had a firearm. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, one of the fastest growing industries of the past decade or so has been the firearms trade. We Americans have purchased a lot of guns in a short time and I’ve seen estimates of somewhere over 200 million firearms of all kinds in our country.

Now here’s where you’d expect the usual anti-gun screed to start but I’m not going to give it to you. I grew up in a household with firearms. I know what they can do and how to use them, and I know that the vast majority of people who own them are law abiding and have no intention at all of doing horrible things.

Yet a part of me is sad and troubled as well about it all because I know that for more than a few of those people who are in the sporting goods stores lining up to purchase firearms there is also a sense that things aren’t right and it may be a good time to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. I’m not talking about hard core “prepper” types with food for a few years and a thousand rounds of ammo in the basement. They exist but they are still few and far between. Instead I see, better yet I feel, a kind of social unease where regular folks are contemplating the world they see around them, the culture they are experiencing, and quietly thinking about how to protect themselves and the ones they love if the usual things that hold us together start falling apart.

These are mostly regular folks, people with the kind of usual lives that form the core of any stable society. They are members of our churches, the people we do business with, folks from all kinds of routine walks of life who are pondering and wondering and then quietly find their way to the counters of the sporting goods stores with a combination of reserve and resolve and thoughts about the “what ifs” where their lives could be changed in an instant if the things they see on TV stop being someone else’s problem and start becoming theirs.

Fortunately the odds are still in their favor, for now. The vast majority of them, and us, will not, and perhaps never, be the victims of violence. Yet, at the same time I know the unease because I feel it too. Could my neighborhood, my city, with its very eclectic groups of people, one day break out into chaos? The answer is simple, “Yes.” Could the bonds that have held us together over the years in relative peace come suddenly unglued? Indeed they could because sin and brokenness and evil are part of the human condition, part of even the best of us, and insanity can quickly descend when the things that make for community are undone and it becomes everyone for themselves.

So you won’t get any argument from me about people trying to think about an end game if the worst should become real. There’s a wisdom in that and as long as it doesn’t descend into a kind of paranoia and, in doing so, actually create fires where none were started it might actually be helpful to keep the peace. Yet there is also a need for a greater wisdom in these days, a wisdom that transcends time and calls us to a way of life that is larger than any moment.

The unease we can feel. The sense of protection and peace we desire but cannot always find. The realization that things are not as we would like them to be and that there is potential for even worse, are illnesses of the soul that no law can cure. The political class often sees laws as an answer in the same way as a person who has only a hammer sees everything as a nail. Yet something larger beckons. The sicknesses of the soul can only, and ultimately, be healed by God alone. The farther we drift away from God the more perilous our journey becomes and our rest is found as we seek and find God. As we draw closer to God the result, in the Christian sense of that drawing closer, is also to bind us to each other and bring down the walls between us, walls sometimes bristling with gun barrels, and even if we cannot always agree on the details we can at least begin to see the “others” in our lives as humans and that’s a good start.

Yes, there is a kind of wisdom in reasonably preparing for the worst. Yet the greater wisdom, even while doing that, is to hope and work for the better. Without that second and greater wisdom we might all find ourselves living in a culture marked by tribalism and violence without meaning. If the light of that greater wisdom is allowed to flourish we at least have a chance.

 

Tomorrow…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 2 Comments

marks the 11th anniversary of my ordination as Priest in the Orthodox Church but there’s more to the story. I was first ordained as a Baptist pastor in 1989 so, in fact, I’ve been in ordained parish or chaplaincy service for over a quarter century and what a long and interesting trip it’s been!

I remember those days late in my last year of seminary, contemplating the future as a fresh, new, and young minister. I had hoped to do good things, many even great ones, through the best way I knew how namely the Gospel, the good news of Jesus. I had studied. I had tested. I had taken psychological tests. I passed the various boards and gatekeepers. I had arrived.

Two parishes followed in reasonably quick succession, parishes with good people but also malignant and vocal minorities who really did plan and scheme and attack and make life miserable. I remember being curled up in a ball deep in my tears in the hall of the parsonage of the church in Kansas that had just fired me without even a clue or a specific reason that I could recall. Somebody somewhere didn’t like me and they had the votes. Everything naive left in me died in those days as we packed our stuff and made plans to head back to Minnesota. All I knew was that I wanted to leave that little town and never go back to a Baptist church, ever, and writing about this even now hurts a bit.

Yet the hurt of those days led me home to Minnesota, older than my years and much wiser through pain. I found a “day job” and then a chaplaincy position in the environment where I started my working life, the nursing home. My studies, too, had taken me far from where I had been. I left the American Baptist Churches, became an Episcopalian, and briefly considered holy orders in the Episcopal Church. I knew then, though, that this community had already gone too far too fast from everything it had cherished and there would be no home for me there.

Instead I discovered in a magazine about a new movement called the Charismatic Episcopal Church, a group of evangelicals and charismatics who had embraced Liturgy and their understanding of the ancient Christian Faith through an Anglican ethos. There were trips to Kansas City to visit the Bishop and, in time, I was ordained Priest and sent back to Minnesota to plant a church. While this was happening I came in greater contact with Eastern Orthodoxy and began to explore its life and ethos. In that time of discovery my heart began to become Orthodox and when I, and then we in our tiny mission, discovered the Western Rite we made the plans to change. Our hope had been to continue our little community as a Western Rite Orthodox Mission (Up here in Minnesota where about 80 percent of everyone who claims a Christian title is either Catholic of Lutheran there is still great potential for such a thing).

Yet it was not to be. Our mission was fervent but larger things were at play and, in time, we chose to leave the mission behind and become part of St. George Orthodox Church. I was eventually ordained Deacon and then two years later Priest and sent to St. Elias Orthodox Church in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The parish was full of good people but needed money for repairs and the necessities of life so, over the years, I served bivocationally, living in St. Paul and traveling to Wisconsin on weekends. It was good work but the travel and the time left me exhausted and my feeling was to move on and let someone else build on a better foundation so I could rest.

My hope was that I would take a sabbatical year and then be picked up in the “draft” my term for the assignment of Priests that usually happens in the early summer. It never, for reasons I still don’t know, happened. Six years from St. Elias I am still in St. Paul, attached to St. George in West St. Paul, and in a mobile ministry of helping parishes in transition while I work my day job. I am a circuit rider of sorts but instead of a horse I have a Nissan and while the Apostle Paul made tents to keep a roof over his head I plan programs for Seniors in an Assisted Living.

I still dream of planting a church here in Minnesota. There is a great potential for this area but, at the present, the will is just not here. This dream, and its deferment, have been a constant in my heart and while I understand that it was not possible while I was in transition to Orthodoxy I may never understand why the dream has been given but its fulfillment has been rendered impossible to date. I still believe in Jesus, as well, even though there have been times when the people I trusted to care for me have provided plenty of evidence to the contrary. There is sin in me and sin in the Church and I’ve tried to be wise and forbearing in it all. Sadly, I’ve also learned through hard experience to be careful with my trust. They say “Once bitten twice shy” and there is some real pastoral wisdom in that phrase. A Pastor without an escape plan when things get hard places themselves in a very vulnerable place so have a solid amount of cash in the bank if a church board or Bishop changes their mind. If I would say anything to current seminarians it would be to love everyone but also be wise because some of the people you love won’t even try to return the favor.

It’s also been a great privilege to serve and help people which is part of the reason I got into the “business” in the first place. A good Priest can make a significant difference in people’s lives, a difference for the good. While pastoral ministry can be painful there are also many moments of joy, of the true satisfaction that comes from making a positive difference, and those moments are the fuel that keeps that original spark burning. For every hurt there are many more happy moments and when I doubt that I simply look back through my file of cards and letters and pictures to remember everything, good and bad, in its proper context.

Right or wrong, sinful or forgiven, at my best or worst, I’ve never lost the awe of serving at the altar and I suppose that if there is anything that could be salvaged from these years it would be just that. There have been moments, of course, when I just wanted to quit, to retreat from the battle and rest for a while. Somehow I always find my way back which either means I’m crazy or called. I’ve also never stopped believing in Christ, although sometimes that belief has come through tears or clenched teeth. Nothing that’s happened to me, good or bad, as a Priest and Pastor has changed my belief that Jesus is exactly who he and his Church claim he is and, because of that, everything he is and says is of the utmost importance.

As the 11th year comes and goes the truth is I have no idea what is going to happen or where this long, strange, trip will take my wife and I. Sometimes I wish I did but that seems to be about me learning the lessons of trust. There are things I would change, of course, like never moving to Kansas, but for the most part its been good and for that goodness the glory goes to the God who has enough of a sense of humor and even more of grace to let me ordained not once, but three times (Baptist, Anglican, and Orthodox) as a tender of his flock.

 

 

 

 

I was 17…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

when I had my first encounter with death, not the movie or funeral home kind of death but the real thing as in a person without breath, without color, their mouth frozen open as they were when their soul left the body. That was my job in high school, a nursing assistant, and while others my age were figuring out how to ask someone to a date I was learning how to properly clean and present the dead while we waited for the funeral home.

In my early years in ministry death was there as well. The call in the night. The bedside vigil. Watching, praying, trying to think of something that would help as the person moved from this life to the next. Mostly peaceful, sometimes violent, always in the understanding that sometime profound had happened, perhaps the most profound thing of all.

The sad truth is that I don’t even remember all of them, the bodies I washed, the vigils I kept, the funerals I’ve done. The traumatic ones have stayed. Those I watched over who were close to me remain. Others, sadly, have been lost to time and only remain in God’s memory. Each has left their mark. The first was an older lady well into her dementia. The most violent was a man who died in front of me as he coughed up his lungs into a towel I was holding because it happened so suddenly we couldn’t even get him to bed. The saddest were the man who I watched die in the middle of DT’s in his middle 40’s and the old man I sat with in the Kansas nursing home who had suffered his whole life with both mental illness and the tragic stigma that it came with in those days. Lately, even though I work with Seniors and people who are dealing with sometimes chronic illness, I’ve largely been spared yet the memories remain because once you see death up close and for real everything changes.

Death is hardly ever like the old movies where a person sort of tips their head to one side, after a few last words, and then look like they go to sleep. Death is sometimes traumatic, violent, and bloody, where the life, by virtue of that trauma, is forcibly removed. Death from illness can be long and drawn out, sometimes taking years as the life slowly trickles out from the one who is sick. The body grows weaker and simply can no longer sustain itself. Sometimes death comes quickly with the first and last signs of its arrival only minutes apart. There are as many ways, and combinations of ways, for people to die as there are people and so even if the causes are identical the actual dying may never be.

Death strikes fear in us. Death is the ultimate threat. Yet death is not without its wisdom and the discerning can learn from it if they’re willing to spend the time contemplating it. As people get older, of course, they do this simply by looking in the mirror but one does not have to wait for the obvious signs of their mortality staring back at them to begin to get the larger picture.

You will die and so will I. Outside the intervention of God every single human being will die. It may be sooner, it may be later, but the fight for life will end and you will lose, at least in the short term. I remember seeing a tee shirt that said “Eat right, exercise, die anyways” and that shirt is 100 percent correct. A thought like that can make one morbid, obsessively introspective, and prone to despair because there is truth to it. Life really is short, often troubled, and eventually ends. Or it can set you free if take it just one step further and realize that since life really can be short, often troubled, and does end, there are so many things you think are important, things you’ve been told or tell yourself, that just simply, in the bigger picture, aren’t. As you come to realize this they lose their power over you, they lose the ability to compel and imprison you. It really is true, you can’t take it with you, so why get too upset if you don’t have it now and if you do have it why tie yourself to the chase of getting more instead of sharing? Death will take everything from you that doesn’t truly matter, that’s not eternal, but everything that matters is both good in this life and remains.

The Psalmist asked God to teach him to number his days so he could increase in wisdom. In Orthodoxy we talk about this as the contemplation of our own death not as a morbid thought rooted in brokenness and despair but rather as that which can, properly understood, be the wings we’ve always wanted to fly high and clear from the sad, broken, gravity of the world as it is. The wisest of people live life as if they are dying because, quite frankly, they are, but they do this not as simple thrill seekers trying to pack in as much “life” before the end but rather as souls who realize where, and in Whom, life in its fullness actually occurs and, that in finding that eternal “more” they find life here as well.

 

If You Care…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

as an Orthodox Christian in America, about your country, there is something you might not have considered. If this country is to change we must evangelize and plant churches everywhere we can.

Yes, voting and being engaged in the political processes with a fully informed Orthodox Christian conscience is important. Still, healthy cultural change almost always comes from the bottom up and not the top down. Remember, the Roman Empire, consumed like our culture with bread and circuses,  was transformed by everyday people of Orthodox Christian faith long before St. Constantine embraced the Faith as emperor. Often, in truth, it is the leaders in a society who are the last to change because their power and their livelihood is rooted in the old order.

However, each person who is won to Christ by our loving and truthful witness is a seed of change and each community we create, each church, becomes a collective expression of that change, the Kingdom of God, providing hope, sustenance, and witness to the light of Christ. The more of each the greater potential there is for not just personal but national transformation.

And so, despite the temptation, and we know the source of that temptation, to hunker down, see to only our own needs, and minimize what that temptation identifies as risk, we need to do something different, higher, and better. The whole thought of our Church in this land needs to be redirected towards mission and evangelism.

Long gone are the days when we could gather ethnics together and hope that they would have children enough to start and grow a parish. Indeed, many of the children we counted on to make this work have left the Faith entirely. Also gone are the days when we could hope to concentrate our people and resources in one large pool often at great distances from the actual or potential faithful. Those models have left us with a faith that is a distinct, and often largely unknown, minority in this country. Repeating those models won’t  change that.

Please also understand that this country has long ceased to be a Christian country in any meaningful sense of the word. Ask yourself as you look around “Are the things you see happening indicative of a culture where Christian ideals are norms?” Don’t  let the many churches you see lead you to overestimate the actual presence of the Faith. A good number of those communities are deeply compromised by the spirit of this age, others, including Orthodox ones, are asleep in the light and their lukewarm life means little even within their own walls. The truth is that America is a mission field, the largest English speaking pagan country in the world and a place where the practicing Orthodox Christian community is a small fraction of the whole.

Yet God is good and there is always hope.

It starts with prayer, the mere act of which draws us closer to God and helps us to see reality, as it were, through His eyes. As we draw closer to God we begin to understand the world around us as God does and when we begin to act on that vision we become transformed and in that transformation other lives begin to change as well.

For example, in drawing close to God we can begin to understand that the people around us, like we ourselves, have needs that only God can meet. The things of the Faith, things which our culture often sees as curiosities at best, become deeply meaningful and profound as we put them in to practice and our sharing them with others, even if they’re  not from our tribe, becomes a joyful overflowing of the water of life we discover within us.

The changes will come in small doses at first, little flickering lights of people who desire God and who, in desiring God, begin to pray and live our Faith. In time the joy of this becomes contagious and person after person in even the most dry parish begin to be transformed and in that transformation the love of God within starts flowing out to others in word and deed. Eventually whole parishes awake from their complacency with a new vigor, a vigor that includes sharing the Faith with others and transforming communities. With many small nudges even the largest of ships can change direction.

As this holy fire spreads people, like the early Christians, will become unafraid of lovingly sharing the gift of Life they’ve  been given. When the request comes to support a good work or plant a new parish they will respond with generosity and fervor. Large and wealthy churches will be embarrassed, in a good way, if they don’t support missions and church planting. Those who truly understand will actively seeking out people from within their own ranks to form the nucleus of new communities. Men who attend our seminaries to become Bishops and Priests will not be trained so much as maintainers of institutions as missionaries because, in truth, mission within and without the parish walls is both the command of Christ and at the core of life. Parish councils and leaders will include, as this wind of God blows free again, outreach to the world as part of the core of everything they do and the souls of their neighbors considered as worthy of time, effort, and resources, as their own.

I know some folks will be the first to say this can’t  be done. I have no intention of changing their minds because only God can do that. At the same time there will be people reading this who understand and hope for exactly what I’ve been talking about because in truth none of this is original or exclusive to me. To those people I say this “Your hunger for God, for beauty and holiness in yourselves and the Church, and your compassion for those outside the walls of your parish is natural, normal, and, in fact, a mark of the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.” Spiritual apathy, deadness, and accommodation, even if they are prevalent, are not the normal lot for Christians. Without judging others nurture the holy fire within you and give it away as often as you can to everyone without regard for what you see in them in the present. Lift up your church and your leaders in prayer and be the change God wishes you to be wherever you are.

Things are dicey now, for sure. At times it may seem hopeless but with and in God there is no such thing as hopelessness. We need to get busy, to lovingly reach out to our culture in crisis by sharing the Gift we’ve  been given and as we do we ourselves and the world around can never be the same.

 

Kids These Days…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

It’s kind of “in” these days to speak about the millenials and snowflakes and kids in college who need “safe zones” so they won’t hear “microaggressive” things that may make them have an emotional reaction to whatever doesn’t agree with their world views. They’re really low hanging fruit, actually, when it comes to critique, yet we’ve forgotten something.

Whose kids are these? Who taught them to be this way? Who raised these “snowflakes” to be the kind of people we now love to mock?

Well, actually, we did.

It’s just a natural fact that a generation gets its cues from the ones prior to it. How to live, love, learn, grow, and how to face the world are not something that comes instinctually to humans, someone in the years it takes to make a mature human has to show the way and the product we see in the present is the result of what happened along that way.

Now it’s easy to be aghast at some of the people we see at campuses around the country, adult in body but childlike in the worst sense of that word when it comes to emotions, expression, and the logic needed to function in reality. Some of these people really are a kind of horror. Yet they are also a mirror that exposes us as well, the people who raised them and the people who have taught them to be what we now see. These perpetual adolescents didn’t come from outer space, they came from our homes, our schools, our houses of worship, and our families.

And that’s where the restoration has to start as well.

A Blessing in Aging

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To me there is a kind of blessing in growing older because, in some ways, as our physical vigor diminishes so does the ability to actively sin. Surely our thoughts can be hot beds of temptation at any age but to turn that temptation into action can be more difficult as our bodies age. Quite frankly there are some checks, as we get older, that we just know our mind may be able to write but our body can’t cash. Perhaps aging’s limits of our physical ability to do what our mind contemplates can be a kind of gift when it comes to living out our temptations, a grace that keeps us from doing, by virtue of age, that which would deface and destroy us if we had the ability.

Every Day

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Sin, in ways small and large, continually knocks us down and by the grace of God we, with the struggle and blessing of repentance,  get back up every day and sometimes minute by minute. For the Christian there will be one last day when this happens, the day when we die and sin has it’s last hurrah with us, flattening us with one final blow. Then, for a while, we stay down but when we, by the grace of God, get back up again it will be forever and there will be no more stumbling, falling, or collapse.  In a weary and tiring world the knowledge of this is an enduring hope.