I find myself looking for bargains over the place these days - trying to save some money while also finding good values.  After all, with emotions running like a roller coaster in reaction to the stock market and all the gloomy economic news, we need to do what we can. 

Church is a very good value as well as being a place of good values!  Even as the media encourages us to get more anxious, church is a place that invites us to climb back inside our own skin and find God deep within.  Even as advertisers try to convince us that their product will make our lives so much better, church is a place that invites us to come and find a better life.  On Sunday mornings, we come together and spend quality time with friends.  We learn through classes - children, youth, and adults.  We join our voices and our spirits in worship - even when we’re not always sure how we understand the nature of divine things. 

And churches offer many other special opportunities.  The congregation I serve as pastor offers several small groups for sharing and mutual prayer, study groups for growth, and opportunities to participate in musical theater productions or choir and band rehearsals.  People come to receive prayer and also to offer to pray for others.  People combine energies to minister to those in need around them and to work for changing unjust social systems.  People come to ask the most important questions of their lives and to walk a journey of faith with others in pursuit of the answers. 

There is plenty of anxiety and fear around us today.  Church offers a counter-message, that the truth of life is not scarcity, but abundance, that we share the life of God, and are always held in the life of the Spirit. 

Yes, the realities of any crisis are challenging and each of us has the responsibility to make choices how we will respond.  The invitation of faith is to breath deeply and let the anxieties running around inside dissipate, even just a little.  Focus your mind on things that bring you to a sense of wholeness - things you know are true.  Allow the Spirit to calm the rushing adrenaline and release you from the grip of fight or flight as your only choices.  Let your sense of playfulness and even humor fill your whole body.  Remember to smile!  And the deep peace of life, the presence of God that passes all understanding, will keep us - will keep our hearts and minds always.  God bless you.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.

--Jack Price