As this year barrels toward a close, we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know how much your friendship, prayers and support have meant to us.  We hope you sense, as we do, the nearness of God and His presence with you and for you in this Holy season.

One of the descriptions of Jesus in the gospels is Emmanuel, or as it translates to English, ‘God with Us’.  We hear it sung in the carols at this time of year and it is a good reminder that one of the reasons Jesus came to Earth was to show us what His Father was like and to give us a model of what we could be like.  The more we look and act like Jesus, the more the world around us will know what God is like.

One of the questions we have been exploring lately is the way in which Jesus treated others.  The church cultures that many of us grew up in emphasized that first you must Believe, then you must Behave and then you could Belong.  But as we look at the model Jesus left for us it seems that He turned this formula around.  The welcome Jesus offered others was a welcome of Belonging.  As they spent time with Him, they grew in their Belief and then finally watching Jesus and listening to his teaching, they discovered how to Behave.

The model that Jesus left us shows that Belonging is the starting point for transformation, not the end result.  We see this in His many encounters through the gospels, “Come and see, Come and follow,  Come and I will . . .”  As we move forward in our communities, the question “Am I starting this encounter with a welcome of belonging? Or am I asking others to Believe and Behave first?  This has been particularly helpful as we spend time in County Jail, Soledad prison, and the Soup Kitchen.  The incarcerated and the poor among us are quick to respond to an invitation of welcome and belonging which leads to transformation. 

During this season our prayer is that we will believe that we belong to God and that we will be transmitters of this inclusive invitation to others.

Blessings, 

Rich and Jayne