So let the table remain before us. Remember the hands that prepared it. Give thanks to the host. Notice the empty chair, the hungry neighbour, and the guest who is not sure they belong. Then pass the bread and make room. The grateful heart asks not only, “What have I received?” but also, “Who still needs a place at the table?”

Christ is risen. Therefore failure can become an invitation, brokenness an opening for grace, and rejection a foundation for new life. This is not our achievement. It is “the Lord’s doing.”

Let our orange shirts be more than symbols worn for a day. Let them become a promise to remember the children, honour survivors and their families, listen without defensiveness, and resist every force that tells a child their language, culture, family, or identity does not matter.

In the wilderness and in the vineyard, God is making a people who can pray truthfully, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Home is the future God is opening before us—and the people with whom God calls us to journey with because the journey is better together.

Today, as we bring a child to the font, we do more than witness a beginning. We remember who we are.

So today, as we hear Jesus call us to take up our cross, we might hear it not as a threat, but as an invitation. Remember that you belong to God.

And our common life is not only about how we serve. It is also about how we pray. How we worship. How we allow God to renew our minds and hearts, so that we may discern the will of God for us and this parish.

The purpose of Christian tradition is not to preserve a museum. It is to form a people capable of loving God and loving neighbour. Worship does not simply remember the past; it makes us available to the living God in the present.

So let us pray, knowing that when our words falter, the Spirit prays with us.

The weeds do not get the final word. Evil does not win. Suffering, sin, and death do not have the last word.

Where in my life is God trying to plant something new? What needs softening, uprooting, or watering? Where might the Spirit already be bringing forth fruit I have not yet noticed?

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” 

We need to come to the table as if we know nothing but are hoping to learn.

There is a place for you at the table, and when we take our seat and join the divine drama, we may discover once again that nothing is too wonderful for the Lord.

The God who called Abraham, who counted faith as righteousness, who healed the woman, who raised the girl, and who raised Jesus from the dead is still at work among us.

The Trinity is not a static doctrine sitting on a shelf but living, dynamic relationship.

A broken promise wounds trust. A kept promise builds it. And Pentecost declares that God is trustworthy. God remains faithful even when circumstances are difficult.

The Ascension is not the story of Christ leaving the world behind. It is the story of Christ trusting the world enough to place his mission into human hands.

Is there something in your life that is troubling you?

Is there something that is causing you to fear?

Is there something that is making you anxious?