The Beacon

Hello Good People of SJC,

As of the new year we at SJC have renewed our Baptism; Installed our new 2023 leadership; we have given out scholarships; and as the hymn goes, we have been charged to look into the eyes of Jesus, abandon our small boats, drop our nets, and follow him. And now we are on a mission to “up” our discipleship by making a habit of using absolute Love in our decision making and choices.

Helping absolute Love become a habit for us we will need the classroom of Lent. It is what Lent does for us. This year’s love-improvement classroom will use a curriculum that will help us make space, make space to reveal God’s divine GODSPACE in our lives and community of faith. Our Lenten curriculum will focus on cleaning out the spaces in our hearts, our homes, and our church so as to create GODSPACE. *As we unclutter, recycle, restore, and recreate our spaces for GODSPACE, we will literally be part of God’s ongoing divine-economy of transformation.

Remember: God wants us to be the most glorious persons we have been created to be.

That is why God’s divine-economy includes God’s unique transforming acts of Love, so as to make and establish a New Creation with us and within us. This process is ongoing and unending, thus our yearly need for Lent.

What are some examples of God’s acts of Love, transforming humanity to God’s divine-economy (GODSPACE)?

*Scripture shows us God’s act of Love in Genesis 1 was bringing Chaos to Creativity, where disorder is transformed into productivity (a productivity that still continues today and always will).

* Scripture shows us God’s act of Love in Exodus where slavery is transformed to freedom; a historic path of slavery is cleared out through the sea which leads to the Hebrew’s free, promised land; a New Creation.

*Scripture shows us the ultimate historic act of God’s Love with Jesus’ crucifixion to Resurrection, transforming death into New Life; an absolute New Creation forevermore that is yours and mine.

Although a few weeks away, I do ask that you please begin thinking about your GODSPACE, a space you will clear and create to assure God’s divine-economy, God’s presence can reside. Look at the spaces in your home—look at the places you gather with your family or visit with friends, your eating areas, your sleeping areas, your garages, your closets. Is there space for God? Is the space a space you would invite God’s presence to be with you in?

At the church, if you have served on a committee such as Property, Finance, Kitchen, Hospitality, Altar Guild, Stewardship, Worship, Music, Food Pantry, seasonal/Christmas, etc., I encourage your committee to schedule a meeting time now to discuss the use of items, space, and storage your committee is involved in and plan for GODSPACE. * As mentioned before, there is an area in Krueger Hall already collecting items to be rehomed or recycled.

St. John’s, we are a New Creation! Let us work together and work hard to establish GODSPACE!

“We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard…that here and there in the world and now then in ourselves is a New Creation.”

–Paul Tillich

Love Pastor Judine