Quick Summary:

NOTE: A VOICE RECORDING OF THIS MESSAGE CAN BE FOUND AT: http://www.peacelutheranseattle.org/?p=3056

Each day brings new measures on the part of government and health officials aimed at lessening the impact and spread of the coronavirus. And each day brings new challenges to each one of our lives as we grapple with shifting realities at work, home, and church.

How will we continue to be the Body of Christ for each other during this extraordinary time? How will we negotiate this new wilderness experience together? These questions are at forefront of my mind as your pastor.

In the text from Exodus, we meet God’s people midway through their Wilderness experience and their formation as a people emerging from slavery. The questions that bubble up for them are real and immediate: How can we know if God is with us, in our midst? What evidence can help us discern the presence and providence of God? How do we respond when we feel abandoned? The kinds of questions they gave voice to are not unsimilar to ones we’re asking ourselves these days.

Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, said that while we cannot choose what circumstances we encounter in this life, we have the power to choose how we will respond to those circumstances.

During this coronavirus time, as we come face to face with our vulnerability and grapple with increasing limitations, we still have the capacity to choose how we will respond...