Ten Days With Talitha

Lord, thank You! Ten days ago, You made me the proud parent of a beautiful baby girl—Talitha Lou Clare. The time seems to have gone by in a blur and yet I feel like these ten days with Talitha have taught me much already …

1. about Your Parenthood:
I love Tali. When I look at Tali, when I hold her in my arms, my heart is set ablaze with wonder. Just the sight of her fills me with delight. Yet what has she done to deserve that love? Nothing. She may share my genes, but the truth is that I barely know her. I love Tali simply by virtue of her being my daughter. How much greater, then, is Your love for us, for me? It’s hard to fathom that You should delight in me the way I delight in Tali. You love me and delight in me, not for anything I can give You, not for anything I can do, but simply by virtue of being Your child, one made in Your image. Sometimes I forget that. I haven’t yet fully understood that You love me simply because I’m Your son. In the same way, You love Tali simply because she’s Tali. May my love for her mirror Your love for me.

2. about Your love for me:
True love, the love You have for me, is unconditional. Since I first read through the Bible as a teenager, I have always been struck by the verse in Proverbs which says, “What a person desires is unfailing love” (19:22 NIV). It’s so true. It’s what I desire. It’s what I’ve found in You. I was reminded of this verse a few nights ago when I was up with Tali in the wee small hours changing a dirty nappy and got peed on in the process. Somehow that experience seemed to give me a pretty good glimpse of what it means to love unconditionally—the way You love me. In Christ, You came to do something about the filth we’re living in and You got peed on (metaphorically speaking) in the process. Give me love like that, I pray.

3. about what it means to praise You:
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week and a half looking at Tali and remarking on how beautiful she is. I can’t help but adore her. As I gaze on her, I marvel at everything from the colour of her eyes to the softness of her skin to the size of her little feet. I notice things about her and they lead me to praise her. I don’t feel like I’m very good at praising You, Lord. Maybe, though, that’s just because I don’t spend enough time looking at You. How much more would I praise You if only I determined to dwell on You more? As Moses so boldly asked, so do I: “Show me Your glory!” (Ex. 33:18)

4. about the weakness of the flesh:
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). Having a child makes me feel much more empathetic towards Peter and the other disciples when they were asked to keep watch and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. In days gone by, there have been plenty of evenings when I have tried to stay awake with Angie as she’s been feeding Tali or as I’m trying to rock Tali in my arms and found myself drifting off to sleep. I’m just so tired. The fact is that I’m simply not as strong as I often like to think I am. I am one in need of grace.

5. about my need for grace:
Tali’s arrival has inevitably led to plenty of disruption of a night time, which in turn has left us tired, fuzzy headed and prone to irritation. Sleep deprivation has made me clumsier, more forgetful and less patient. Last night, I was trying to give my son his dinner and dropped his bowl of pasta upside straight onto the placemat. My wife asked me to cut up some bread to go with dinner; thirty seconds later, I’d completely forgotten. The night before that, when my son Jed was having a hard time falling asleep, my forbearance with him was being pushed faster and further even than normal. It’s fair to say, tiredness doesn’t bring out the best in me (or many people, I expect, for that matter). All of which makes me acutely aware of how much grace Angie and I need to give each other, giving each other the leeway and understanding we’d like the other to give us. Knowing my own acute need for grace, Lord, grant that I may learn to be more gracious to others and make greater allowances for human weakness.

6. about my sinfulness:
Lord, I know that I am a sinner. Nothing helps reveal the fundamental disposition of my soul to self-seeking than throwing in an extra person to live with us, especially an extra person who demands so much of my care and attention. Tali’s presence with us helps remind me that the world does not revolve around me, and nor should it. Father, forgive me and heal me of my selfishness.

7. about love being love in action:
Loving Tali involves me in serving Tali’s needs. Over these past ten days, I have seen much more clearly how love has to be love in action. A loving feeling or a loving sentiment is all well and good, but the love Tali needs is the love which will feed her, change her, dress her, hold her, rock her to sleep, and so on. And what’s more, love in action is often quite inconvenient. I’m reminded of the parable of the Good Samaritan. I’m sure it wasn’t convenient for the Samaritan to interrupt his journey, pour out his oil and wine, make impromptu bandages from his clothes, give up his comfortable donkey ride, spend a night nursing a badly injured man, and then write a blank cheque for the man’s recovery. Yet such is Your love for me. Teach me more through Tali how to delight in being inconvenienced for the sake of love.

8. about the dignity of all people:
As I write this, Talitha is fast asleep on my shoulder. I hear her delicate snoring. I feel the soft and gentle rise and fall of her chest against mine as she breathes. She is so small (7lb 4oz when she was born). In the scheme of things, her life seems so inconsequential. “What is man that you are mindful of him?” the psalmist asked (Ps. 8:4). And yet, I’m reminded of those wonderful words of C. S. Lewis, that there are no ordinary people, only immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. The fact is that as Tali’s slender frame rests on me so blissfully unaware of me writing this, I am conscious that I bear the incomparably weight of an immortal soul on me. Indeed, this little lady is so very precious to you that your Son Jesus died on the Cross for love of her. There is no human life which He did not esteem high enough to redeem at the price of His own blood. Grant me grace, O Lord, to remember that and throughout her life to take Tali as seriously as You take her.

9. about Your knowledge of us:
Talitha Lou Clare Harvey is Yours before she is mine. It is amazing to me that ten days ago, I didn’t know Tali. I knew she was there (she would give her Mommy the occasional kick from the womb which I might feel), but that’s it. I didn’t know she was a she. I didn’t know she was a Tali. After ten days with Tali, there is still so much for me to learn. I feel like she’s growing up too quickly. I have so much more to learn about her. How great it is that as I, her earthly Daddy, struggle to interpret the reasons for her stirrings, You, her heavenly Daddy, understand each and every tiny little cry perfectly. Nothing about her is hidden from You. Her frame was not hidden from You in the womb and it isn’t now. You knew her before we even knew she had been conceived. You watched on as her heart struck its first beat. You counted one by one as each new hair was added to her head. You know Tali through and through. She is Yours. Lord, give me grace to remember that and to teach her that, so that she might know it for herself.

10. about the Incarnation:
When I look at baby Talitha, I see someone so weak, so needy, so defenceless, small and vulnerable. How reckless, how audacious, how daring, therefore, was the Incarnation! The whole enterprise was fraught with danger, with risk, with the very real possibility of failure. Human life is so fragile. How is it then that the One to whom all creation looks for life, should look to one of His creatures to give Him life? How is it that the Source and Spring of all life should imperil that same all-creating Life in the dangers of childbirth? How is it that the only truly independent and self-sustaining Being in the universe should choose to become dependent to such an extent as a baby is dependent on a mother’s sustaining? I am reminded of those ancient words of the Te Deum in the Book of Common Prayer: “When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.” Well You might have done, though. Those wonderful words of Charles Wesley say it all: “Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man.” The boldness of the Incarnation is truly incomprehensible. That the Lord of all, who wants for nothing, should condescend to cry for milk at a poor mother’s breast in order to rescue us from our sin only goes to show how desperately You love us. Lord, let me humbled anew by the great depths You plumbed in order to redeem unworthy people like me.

Gracious God, thank You for Talitha. You have used her to open my eyes to so much about You already! My prayer for her is that she will know herself now and always Your Talitha—Your darling little girl, Your precious little lamb. I pray that she would hear Your Son’s voice saying, “Talitha cum” and calling her to life in Him. I pray that she would grow up to be a woman in whose life Christ’s death-defying love and power are made manifest for all to see. All this I ask in the name of Him who calls us from death to life, Your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Why Jesus Came

Preached at Slaithwaite Methodist Church
11th May 2014: 4th Sunday of Easter
Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:18-25; John 10:1-10

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He became truly and fully human. He lived in abject poverty in Roman-occupied Palestine. He spent his ministry as a homeless wanderer going from place to place. He mixed with all the wrong kind of people, often eating and drinking in questionable company. He was deceived, denied and deserted by his best friends. He was humiliated before crowds of onlookers and killed like a common criminal. He died, crying the cry of one abandoned by God. He rose again, appearing to his disciples and saying, “Peace be with you.” Later, he ascended into heaven to take his seat at God’s right hand as King. The question is: Why? Why did he do all this? Why did he go through all this? Why did he come to us in the first place?

Why did Jesus come to us? That’s the question, isn’t it? Was it to help make good people like us a little bit better? Was it simply to teach us how we could make God work for us, how we could wiggle our way into heaven? Or, was it, rather, to make us feel bad, to judge us and to set the bar for what it means to live well so impossibly high that none of us could ever reach it? The Nicene Creed, that ancient statement of Christian belief, puts it quite plainly when it explains why Jesus spoke and acted the way he did (including his being killed and raised to new life) by saying that he did it “for us and for our salvation.” That, we believe, is why Jesus came down from heaven: “for us and for our salvation.”

But what does that actually mean? For a lot of people, ‘salvation’ means getting to go to heaven when we die. But is that it? Is that really the sole reason that Jesus came? Is salvation merely about making sure we end up on the right side of the railway tracks when the lights go out? Don’t get me wrong, that’s important; but is that it? American Methodist preacher, Will Willimon, doesn’t think so. “Salvation,” he says, “isn’t just a destination; it is our vocation.” Salvation, in other words, is something, not just confined to the afterlife, but something we can begin to experience this side of death; it is our calling here and now. And that seems to be very much what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel reading. “I came,” he says, “that they (that is, his flock—you, me and anyone else who hears his voice and follows him) may have life and have it abundantly.”

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “I came that they may have the vague hope of life when they die, have it abundantly.” He doesn’t say, “I came that in the end they may have life, and have it abundantly on that day.” No. He says we can have it. We can have life in all its fullness, today. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus came to breathe new life into us now. He came to make us citizens of heaven now. Jesus came to make us participants in his resurrection now. Abundant life doesn’t just lie beyond the grave, waiting to be lived at some distant future; it awaits us here. We don’t have to wait till we’re dead to live. Jesus gives us the opportunity to start living now. What we need to be asking ourselves is this: Are we yet alive? Or, to put it in the words of Psalm 23: Is our cup overflowing? When we take a look at our lives, do we see a glass half-empty, a glass half-full, or a glass filled to the brim and spilling out all over the tablecloth?

Perhaps to help us answer that question, we need to think together about of the kind of life that Jesus here is talking about: What is abundant life?

An early Protestant teaching aid, the Westminster Catechism, asked new Christians, “What is the chief end of humanity?” The new Christians were expected to reply, “To glorify God and to enjoy God forever.” There are two main ways we use the word ‘end’ in English. The first means final or last—the end of the game, game over, full time, the final whistle. The second means a purpose or a goal—the end result, the place something is headed, the destination, the point of something. That is clearly the meaning in mind here. The principal purpose or goal of human life, our aim and the place everything is moving towards, is the worship and enjoyment of God. St. Augustine, one of the great fathers of the Church, once wrote that we were made for God and because we were made for God our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Human life is one long choir rehearsal. That is our raison d’être, our reason for living. Abundant life, therefore, is life lived to the praise of God.

Over the bank holiday, I was listening to Premier Christian Radio. Leading up to the weekend, they’d been asking listeners to vote for their favourite hymns and worship songs, before on Monday counting down the top 50 and revealing the winner. Beating off stiff competition from ‘And Can It Be’, ‘How Great Thou Art’, ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘In Christ Alone’, the number one was Matt Redman’s double Grammy-winning song, released in 2011, ‘10,000 Reasons’. Being such a modern it was a somewhat surprising champion and yet I wonder if it’s because it’s a song that speaks to our need to worship, and nowhere more so than in the chorus, which echoes the opening words of Psalm 103:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O my soul,
Worship his holy name.
Sing like never before,
O my soul.
I’ll worship your holy name.”

Abundant life flows from a living, active and deepening relationship with God through Jesus. In the 15th century, the Russian artist Andrei Rublev painted a famous icon of the story in Genesis 18 where three angels are said to have visited Abraham in disguise. The painting is full of rich symbolism and often interpreted to be a representation of God the Holy Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The three figures sit at a square table together, looking intently and lovingly into one another’s eyes. We, the viewer, stand back looking in on the scene. There are four sides to the table. There are three figures sitting down. We are invited to take the empty seat. That, right there, is what it means to have life and have it in abundance. It is to be swept up into a personal connectedness with the God who is love in three persons. It is to be welcomed by God into the life of God—his life, his story, his reign. It is to live life in the constant companionship of a God who loves us unconditionally, who is infinitely interested in us and who gives us meaning, purpose and fulfilment to our existence.

We all want to have a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfilment to our lives; but God is the only one who can give it to us. Lot of things promise abundant life; but only God delivers on that promise. The advertising industry makes money off of us by trying to tap into those inner longings and telling us that if we buy this or that product, we will achieve a certain kind of life that we want for ourselves. Branding seeks to make an emotional connection with us, seeking to infiltrate our minds with the idea that if only we buy this mobile phone, wear these clothes, go on this holiday we can plug the hole within us. The fact is, however, it’s a lie. Naomi Klein, author of the book No Logo, warns: “When you listen to brand managers talk you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs that we have for community and narrative and transcendence. But in the end it is a laptop and a pair of running shoes. And they might be great, but they’re not actually going to fulfil those needs; which serves them (the brands) very well because, of course, that means you have to go shopping again.” No ‘thing’ can fill the gap, no matter how amazing that ‘thing’ might be. We need God.

The same goes for people and relationships, too. Recently, I was watching the film adaptation of the book Anna Karenina and it raised a lot of these same issues. Anna, wife of high-ranking government official Karenin, embarks on an adulterous relationship with Alexei Vronsky, a Russian cavalry commander. In time, she and Vronsky have a child together and run off to Italy where they lead a rather directionless existence. Bored and longing for home, they eventually return to Russia; but when they get there, Anna is shunned by society because of her affair. Vronsky, however, because of the double-standards in these matters applied to men and women, is still able to mix in society without her and soon, she becomes jealous, suspicious that her lover is casting his gazes elsewhere. In a final act of hopeless despair, Anna throws herself under a train and dies. Anna literally died in the search for abundant life. She chased what she thought would make her happy and in the end, it killed her. It’s a desperately sad story; but unfortunately, it happens all the time. We jump from relationship to relationship, experience to experience, product to product, convinced that the next one will give us the meaning and fulfilment we’re looking for and in the end, it kills us. One way or another, it kills us. We’re cheated. We cheat ourselves by settling for less than we were made for, for less than Christ came to give us.

In the words of Casting Crowns, “We were made to thrive.” The life Jesus wants us to have is life free from the spectre of death; uncontrolled, uninhibited, unrestrained by the reality of our own mortality. It’s a life where the darkness has no power over us—it holds no fear, it poses no obstacle, it doesn’t have the last laugh. We don’t have to accept the death which destroys our living. This is resurrection life—life where Christ is victor, that death has lost its sting, that life is everywhere being restored. I don’t think it’s any accident that Jesus utters these words just a chapter before he travels to Bethany to raise his friend Lazarus from the tomb and declares that he is “the Resurrection and the Life.” Life lived in light of Easter, in light of Christ’s resurrection, is abundant life. Therefore, to live in relationship with Jesus, in the sure and certain hope he gives us that death is not the end, is to be infused with his new, risen life; it is to have life and have it in abundance.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once went about the streets of Copenhagen asking people he met whether or not they believed in the resurrection, that Jesus really was alive and risen from the dead. Almost everyone he talked to said they did. He then asked them what difference (if any) that that had made to the way they were living their lives. From the answers he received, Kierkegaard concluded that it didn’t make much difference at all. For most of the people he talked to, Easter came and went and they simply got back to business, returned their ordinary lives as if nothing had happened. If Jesus is really alive—surely, it would change us. Surely it would fire us into action. Surely, it should send us out into the world with confidence and enthusiasm to work with God in making his rule on earth a visible reality—the kingdom of God, what things looks like when God is in control. This, too, is abundant life. So I guess the question is: Have we got it?

Let us pray:
Lord, you are great, and greatly to be praised. Awaken us to delight in your praises, for you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you. Amen.

Worship

Preached at Dalton, St. Paul’s Methodist Church
13th October 2013: 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 17:11-19

What is worship? What’s it all about? What it’s meant to be like? How’s it supposed to be? Does it matter if it’s traditional or contemporary, if we sing hymns or songs, if we say prayers that are written or prayers that are extempore? What are we doing when we worship God? What does the word ‘worship’ even mean?

The Bible never gives us a formal definition of what worship is. There are lots of examples of people doing it; some who seem to do it rather well, others who seem to do it rather badly; but nowhere are we ever explicitly told what it is. Our English word ‘worship’ actually comes from two Old English words: weorth, meaning ‘worth’, and scipe or ship, meaning something like ‘a state of being’. In other words, worship is really worth-ship; it is to convey or to express a sense of something or someone’s being worthy.

That means we all worship something, whether it’s God or not. Because worship is simply about ascribing something or someone ultimate importance in our lives, even the most hardened atheist worships. Whatever we build our lives on, whatever we base our identities on, whatever we look towards to give us meaning and purpose, these are the things we ascribe worth to, the things we worship. Sometimes we won’t even realise we’re doing it. Our achievements, our social status, our talents, our desire for power or control, even our relationships; all these can be things we worship, things we give worth to as a way of finding our own sense of self-worth.

Martin Luther, the famous Protestant reformer of the 16th century, was once asked to describe what he thought true worship was. His answer: the tenth leper turning back. For Luther, this story of an outcast, healed, turned back to God in praise and made whole again, was the essence of what all genuine worship looks like. This is the litmus test of what we do on a Sunday when we gather together like this, for what we call ‘Church’. What do you think? Are we truly worshipping?

In the time we have together now, I want to try and encourage us to think more about the tenth leper’s response to his healing and Jesus’ words to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” It is my hope that the tenth leper’s example will inspire our own worship, that it will help describe, speak to and shape our own response to Jesus, for all he has done and is doing for us, as one of praise and thanksgiving.

First, I want to go back and recap the story a little bit. Jesus was on the road, pressing on towards Jerusalem and his date with destiny on the cross. On the way, he passed through the rather undesirable territory of Samaria. Now the Samaritans were no friends of the Jews; they were considered heretics, half-castes, corrupters of true religion. Nevertheless, he passed through their land, his eyes firmly fixed on Jerusalem.

As he was walking, Jesus was greeted by a small colony of ten lepers on the outskirts of a border town between Samaria and Galilee. Standing at a safe distance they called out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Jesus looked at them, sadness in his eyes, and said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests and let them examine you,” (just as the Old Testament law required of people with leprosy).

They went all ten of them. And as they went, their skin was restored, as good as new. There was no sign of the disease that had so disfigured them and cut them off from their community: their family, their friends and their neighbours. They were healed. One of the men, a Samaritan, realised what had happened and came running back to Jesus. “Thank you! Thank you!” he said as he fell in wonder at Jesus’ feet.

Jesus looked around him. “Where are the other nine?” he asked. “Didn’t I heal ten people? Are you seriously telling me that the only person who returned to worship God was this outsider from Samaria? Samaritans aren’t even supposed to know how to God worship.” Almost speechless, Jesus turned again to the Samaritan and said, “Come on. Up you get. Get on your way. Your faith has made you whole again.”

Ten lepers are healed; one comes back to say ‘thank you’. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Ingrates, the lot of them. Jesus ought to have given them their leprosy back. That would’ve shown them.” Now before we get carried away with thinking like that, we should be careful; we may just turn out to be one of those nine ingrates. But at the same time, we should be careful lest we get the impression that all this just a lesson in saying a salutary ‘thank you’ to God as if we were politely thanking our grandmother for the pair of socks she gave us for Christmas.

Worship is more than saying ‘thank you’, no matter how sincere or well-intentioned those thanks might be. It is the whole response to God, typified by the tenth leper’s act of turning back to Jesus. All ten were healed. Only one turned back to praise God as a result. All of which makes us ask the question: what was so different about this one leper from the other nine? Listen again to the way Luke tells the story: “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”

“When he saw that he was healed…” You know what they say, don’t you? “Seeing is believing.” The difference between the Samaritan leper and the other nine lepers wasn’t that one had a degree in theology and was able to interpret what was going on; the difference was that the one who came back realised what happened, let in sink in and gave it the space to change him. Because he saw, he recognised who Jesus was. Because he saw, he knew that he had something to be thankful for. Because he saw, he felt compelled to come back in response to all that Jesus had done for him. Worship is about learning to better spot the signs of God in our lives; it is practicing to see the glory of God all around us.

We Christians are people who celebrate God’s movement towards us in Jesus Christ. We are the people who believe that in Jesus, God has bridged the gap between us, taking all the sin and wounded-ness of the world with him to the cross. We are the people who believe that because of Jesus, we have had a way back into relationship with God opened up for us, life as it was always meant to be. The question is: what have we done with that? What have we done about responding to the One who is drawing us back where we belong, into the life of God?

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the one who comes back to Jesus was a Samaritan. It takes a foreigner, an outsider, someone of a different religion to teach us how to worship. I wonder whether the same might be true for us today as well. When it comes to worship, we Christians can often be lazy, half-hearted and uncommitted. For many of us, it’s hard enough to drag ourselves out of bed once a week to worship, let alone any more than that. Our indifference is put to shame by the many committed Jews and Muslims who commit themselves to praying either three or five times a day without fail; many of those not just praying, but bowing down and even prostrating themselves in thanks and praise.

“Okay,” you might say, “but their law requires them to do that. We’re not under the law, we’re under grace. We worship God because we want to, not because we have to.” But that’s exactly the point. The tenth leper turned back to Jesus in heartfelt gratitude, compelled only by the sense of having to offer his thanks and praise for all that God had done for him. We, like the leper, have received life and health and salvation from Jesus; but how many of us can say, hand on heart, that we came here this morning because we felt we had to, because we simply had to praise God and thank him for all he’s done for us?

Worship is a joyful response to the love of God. It is a turning back to God in whole-hearted appreciation for his healing power at work in our lives. It is a giving of ourselves to the One who in Jesus has given himself to ingrates like us. God’s grace is a gift, a gift which is even capable of healing us of our ungratefulness. And isn’t that even more reason to turn back and worship God? He even heals those who couldn’t care less. Thanks be to God! The tenth leper saw what Jesus had done for him and it made him adjust his course, it took him in a different direction. This is what true worship does: it changes us.

One last thing I want to focus on: those words of Jesus, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” Do those words strike you as odd at all? I mean, isn’t the man already well? Luke says, doesn’t he, that he was healed? Clearly, Jesus’ words are about more than mere healing. That is certainly suggested in the way the old King James Version translates it, “Your faith has made you whole.” Eugene Peterson, in his more recent translation, The Message puts it like this, “Your faith has healed and saved you.” Wellness, wholeness, healthiness, salvation—all of these things are involved in what the word means.

What Jesus seems to point to is the possibility of being healed, but not made whole. All ten were healed. Only of the one who returned to worship him did Jesus say, “Your faith has made you well.” There is a wellness beyond our bodily well-being and a health beyond our physical health, which is in having our lives caught up into the life of God and being the people God made us to be. The Westminster Catechism teaches that humanity was created to “worship God and enjoy him forever.” When we, like the leper, turn ourselves to Jesus, when we centre our lives on him, we are restored to our God-given nature and made whole again.

Just as Jesus healed all ten of the lepers who came to him begging for mercy, so God’s unquenchable, redeeming love is for all people. In Jesus, healing and life is freely available for all people everywhere; but for those who come back, for those who fall at Jesus’ feet in worship and wonder there is something more, there is wholeness, completeness, shalom. How sad it is for those who are healed, but not whole.

Worship is to be brought back into the original relationship of creature and Creator; it is to return to live in the community with God and all humanity, just as we were intended to live. In the simple but difficult act of worship, we rediscover what it really means to be healthy. In short, to worship truly is truly to be saved.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.