Dear Faith Family,

The last few weeks have felt weighty. There has been a heaviness all about us in our city, society, and culture. And, there has been a heaviness within our faith family amind the various trials and troubles, opportunities, and responsibilities of our individual stories. And while we tend to bemoan the heaviness, shake off the weight, and ignore the burden that would drag us down, there is something else happening under the weight if we will let it. The weight I, and most of you, am feeling is not a sinking weight, pulling us down into despair or apathy, but rather a weight that draws us deeper into the heart of God.

What we will discover under the weight--that is if we aren't blinded by complaint, busied by solutions, or distracted by addictions--is the heart and healing of our heavenly Father. Or, as Psalm 34:18 puts it,

"If your heart is broken, you'll find God right there;
if you're kicked in the gut, he'll help you catch your breath."

When we follow Jesus, we follow him into the depths of real life. All the muck, all the mundanity, all the fragility, all the physicality, the money, the emotions, the relationships, etc. And in those depths, we discover things that are awful and painful, and we discover something that transcends it all: the compassionate heart of a Father, and the healing Spirit of a Savior.

May we let the weight draw us into the depths from which new creation arise. God bless.