As part of our Fall events with Trinity and First Pres, join us on Wednesday, November 16 at 6:00pm at the Bracketts’ home in Nob Hill for our annual Friendsgiving dinner. Please RSVP in slack so we know how much turkey to roast and let us know what sides you’re bringing.
On Sunday November 13th, we are doing a Q&A in our Sunday gathering.
Normally, we take a chunk of our time together each week to hear the word preached and the gospel proclaimed. We have been working through the book of Luke for two and a half years now, and it’s been great, but it’s also a one way conversation. So about once a year, we take a week to have a discussion where folks can ask Pastor Jon questions. They can be questions about a Biblical text, theological idea, a question about life, or really anything you can think of. All questions are completely anonymous and you are really encouraged to bring up anything that’s been on your mind.
Questions can be submitted anytime using the form below:
In John 17, Jesus spends some time right before he is arrested praying. This chapter is one of the most amazing parts in all of scripture.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:20–21
In praying for his people, Jesus prayed that we would be a people of unity. Look at how he builds the idea: At the bottom, Jesus and the Father are united. Above that, he prays that we would have that same kind of unity among the people of God. At the top—and this is amazing part—he says that this kind of unity will display to the world the truth of the gospel.
Our world is fractured and broken. People don’t get along. Our sinful hearts push people who aren’t like us away. Sadly, that’s the normal pattern in our world and this pattern has played out over and over throughout history.
It’s into this darkness that the unity of the church can be a bright light. The people of God are called to stand out by being a diverse group of weirdos who love each other. We are a people united to Christ, and so we are united to one another.
In an effort to live into this truth, we are partnering with a few other churches in the city for Holy Week 2022. We invite you to not only come together and celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord, but to come together and join arms with a few other churches who also love the Lord and who are committed to San Francisco: First Presbyterian Church, Sanctuary Church, and Trinity Church.
— Pastor Jon
We will be joining First Presbyterian Church in the evening at their location for a traditional Palm Sunday gathering.
We will not meet for our regular Wednesday night dinner this week.
We will be meeting with the folks from Trinity SF, Sanctuary, and First Presbyterian Church for Christ in the Passover: A Seder, a meal where Rich Robinson from Jews for Jesus will be leading and teaching us. RSVP required.
We’ll be with the same three churches again for a gathering where we remember the sacrifice of our Lord in our place. This service will focus on the last seven sayings of Jesus from the cross.
For Easter, we will be back on Powell in North Beach to celebrate the pinnacle of the church calendar year—the day our Lord was resurrected and defeated death!
Grace Fellowship
Italian American Social Club
Hey Everyone. We took the holiday schedule survey the last few weeks to see who was in town and whatnot so that we can plan the next month and a half for our little church. Here is the schedule that we came up with. We’ll be taking off two Sundays in December and a few Wednesday night dinners.
November 24 - No Wednesday Dinner
December 5 - No Sunday Gathering
December 12 - Prayer Walk (Sunday morning)
December 19 - Christmas Sunday Gathering
December 26 - No Sunday Gathering
December 29 - No Wednesday Dinner
Here at the Porch we believe that one of the best ways that the church can show the love of Jesus to the world is through foster care and adoption. Even if you aren’t a foster parent yourself, there are lots of ways to help foster families take care of these little ones.
Family Builders is the agency that Jon and Melissa are a part of as foster parents. Every year at Christmas, they do a gift drive where people can buy presents for foster kids. This year, our church is going to jump on board.
Here is the link to participate. Happy Shopping and thanks for pitching in.
Instructions from Family Builders: IMPORTANT: Each year we call upon our community to help make the Holidays a little brighter for the children and youth in foster care that Family Builders serves. Below you will find requested items that you can sign up to purchase. You will find on most items a child ID. All gifts must be mailed or delivered to Family Builders by DECEMBER 3RD. Our Shipping address is 1900 Embarcadero Suite 303 Oakland, CA 94606. When possible, please label any gifts that are mailed or dropped off with this ID. If you are having the gift shipped from a supplier and there is an option to send a note, please include this child ID on the note. This will help us immensely in the sorting process. If you would prefer to purchase any of the below gifts from a different retailer, that is fine. Please ensure that it is the SAME ITEM and in the correct size if applicable. Thank you again for your support!
I just wanted to remind you all about our Sunday plans. Last week, we finished our Summer Sessions. We had a really great summer being back in person and talking about gospel basics. Starting this week at 10:30AM, we are going back to a more normal Sunday gathering. I’m very excited to be together with you all and get back into the book of Luke (don’t forget your Luke booklet if you still have it).
Before we meet together this week, I’d like you to spend a bit of time and think about how lucky we are to gather as the people of God. We aren’t just a group of friends getting together around a common interest. Something deeper happens when we gather as the church. Mike Cosper has a great little blurb:
“Theologian Jeremy Begbie calls the church gathering an ‘echo from the future,’ a foretaste of something we’ll see come to fruition when Christ returns and all things are made new, a not-yet life that we taste in part already. Today, we gather in exile, in the world but not of it, but one day the exile will end. God will rebuild creation, and not one corner of it will be stained by sin and rebellion. Until then, we have these momentary and imperfect glimpses and foretastes as we gather, hear the Word, and respond together. As flawed and imperfect as these gatherings are, they’re the most truthful moment of our week, an outpost of the kingdom of God, and a foretaste of eternity.”
I look forward to seeing you all on Sunday morning for “a foretaste of eternity.”
—Pastor Jon
We’re resuming in-person Sunday gatherings and are so looking forward to being together again! As Jon shared in the last update, these gatherings will be more informal than our regular liturgy: a relaxed hour of worship and collaborative learning, spending time together and growing as disciples of Jesus.
Sundays, June 13–September 5 at 10:30am, at the American Legion Hall at 1524 Powell Street, San Francisco.
As San Francisco moves into the new phase of reopening, we are continuing to operate within the official guidelines of the updated Safer Return Together health order effective June 15th. Most notably this means:
Everyone, regardless of vaccination status, is required to remain masked for the entire time we are indoors together.
All available windows and doors will be open to improve ventilation and promote air circulation.
Sanitizer will be readily available for use after you have contact with high-touch surfaces.
If you are ill, please stay home and get tested for COVID-19.
We strongly urge everyone twelve years and older to get vaccinated as soon as you can if you have not already done so. If you have any questions, please reach out to Kala at admin@porchsf.com.
Hey everyone. As the city moves towards reopening, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what we should do going forward. I wanted to share with you all the plan we’ve come up with. We are going to start meeting in person again every Sunday starting June 13th. For the summer, it won’t be a normal looking church service; we are going to do a paired down liturgy. If you were on the Zoom Wednesday nights, you probably heard me call it “diet church” as a joke, but the official name we’ve come up with is Summer Sessions. We are going to meet at the Powell location on Sundays at 10:30am for about an hour. We will sing a song or two campfire style, just someone with a guitar leading the group. Then I’ll do a bit of teaching, but it won’t look like a normal sermon: we’ll watch videos, have a bit of Bible reading, and do a little more back and forth discussion. Hopefully, it’ll be a great summer spending time together again and growing as disciples of Jesus.
So what are we asking from you all during the summer? Since we are a small church who is just getting started, the first big ask is for you to make an effort to be there. We are really hoping to use the summer sessions to build up some momentum for a bigger relaunch on September 12th, but that’s not going to happen if all of us only show up occasionally. So I’m really asking that you make Sunday mornings a priority in the summer (when you’re in town of course).
The second big ask is for you to really take ownership of our growth plan moving forward. Remember, we are looking to grow in two areas: first, in people who are partners in the kingdom who are joining us in what we are doing. Second, and more importantly, we want to invest in people who are the mission. As we think about our church growing, our focus needs to be on loving and investing in our neighbors and friends who aren’t followers of Jesus. These Summer Sessions are going to be a great avenue to invite people from both of those groups.
That’s what Sunday will look like. What about Wednesdays? We are only going to keep doing the zoom meetings until June 9. Let’s be honest, zoom is a huge blessing and a huge curse. It’s a blessing in that it allowed us to see each other and meet during the height of the pandemic, but let’s be real, we all hate it and if we never had to look at another zoom screen, it’d be too soon. We also want to move back to our in home missional family gatherings, but we don’t have the details worked out yet. At some point in the summer, we will start hosting dinners up at our place during the week, but a lot of this depends on the city’s restrictions and how things look in a few weeks. So stay tuned for more updates (hopefully really soon).
I know it’s been a tough year to plant a church. I thank you all for your dedication and passion to keep with it. I am really looking forward to getting back together every week and plowing forward in our kingdom work together.
—Pastor Jon
I am super excited to announce that we actually get to see each other again. Some churches are already meeting for normal services, but we’ve decided to ease back into our normal routine. The first step will be meeting at Marina Green every other Sunday in April and May. We started on Easter and it was great, so we want to keep it going.
You are encouraged to bring your own food and a blanket or chair if you want. We still want to wear our masks and practice social distancing. Some folks are vaccinated but a lot of us aren’t yet, so we want to continue to be careful.
I really look forward to seeing you all there!
—Jon
Dates: April 18, May 2, May 16, May 30
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Easter is our most important day of the year as followers of King Jesus. It’s the day when we celebrate the fact that our Savior defeated death and rose from the grave. It’s the day we celebrate that he’s made a downpayment on our eventual resurrection.
As a church, we want to celebrate this amazing holiday together. We missed our first in-person Easter as a church last year because of COVID-19 and state regulations for shelter in place. This year, things have opened up a little. We still aren’t ready to meet indoors yet (just to be safe), but we are ready to see each other face to face as a church for the first time in what seems like forever.
So we are going to get together outdoors on Easter. Here is the plan: we are going to have our normal Sunday gathering online at 10:30am. I’d encourage you all to get up, make a nice Easter breakfast, and watch that on your TV or phone or however you normally stream it. Then jump in the car or on your bicycle and head on over to Marina Green and meet us for an Easter Church Picnic at 12:30pm. Towards the east side of the parking lot there is a white building (on google maps they call it a “Degaussing Station”). We’ll be on the lawn somewhere close to that building.
We are still going to be taking COVID precautions: We ask that you all wear masks and maintain social distance. We will also have hand sanitizer available. You are welcome you to bring something to eat (or grab some Philz coffee from the coffee truck), but if you do eat we ask that you be socially distanced from folks not in your household while you have to take off your mask. We know it’s a hassle, but we still aren’t out of the woods, and we don’t want to be the church that ends up on CNN because we all got each other sick.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I am personally really excited to see you all again and build up some momentum as a church as we move toward meeting in person again. But really, I’m excited about celebrating Jesus’ resurrection with you all. See you all on April 4th.
— Pastor Jon
It’s been a crazy few weeks. On January 6th, we saw a lawless mob breach the Capitol building in an attempt to force elected officials to overturn the presidential election. This was followed by an impeachment and an inauguration all within two weeks. If you have followed the news at all, you know that our country is divided and tensions are high.
How should we think about and process all that is happening? How should the church view these events? How should we respond?
While I was growing up here in San Francisco, I was taught two ideas. The first one came from school and the second one came from mostly conservative church folk. From school I learned the idea that people are basically good deep down and that humanity is getting better and moving towards the utopia of something like Star Trek. From my more conservative church and family, I was taught that America is the greatest nation ever and that we are a beacon of light.
As I grew up and started really digging into scripture, I saw something else. First, the gospel tells us everyone is not “basically good” but that we are sinners (Romans 3:23). Deep down within the heart of humanity is a rotting sinful nature. Second, I read about the pattern of Babylon: broken people form societies and governments all under the sinful influence of the enemy. And because our societies and our governments are run by fallen people, they oppose the things of God. Because of the influence of the enemy, we see injustice, oppression, evil, and war as the norm. The Bible says that these systems of Babylon will repeat until Christ returns. Babylon. Persia. Greece. Rome. The pattern keeps rolling. And no human nation is a “Christian Nation” but all are nations that are filled with sin. The United States of America is in many respects a great nation. There are a lot of things to love about our country. But we aren’t perfect. In many ways, we are a part of the ongoing system of Babylon. It should be no surprise that we are divided. It should be no surprise that sin has its hands all over our history and our current political system.
My favorite book of the Bible is Revelation. The main idea in the book of Revelation isn’t about an end times timeline. The idea behind the book of Revelation is to teach the people of Jesus how to live for his kingdom while surrounded by Babylon; how to conquer by following the pattern of Jesus. He models for us the path to victory. He won by dying for his enemies. He died by losing. He won his victory as the lion by dying as the lamb.
So as the world around us keeps up with the pattern of Babylon, his people are called to persevere and bear witness to our king all while facing oppression and injustice. In the book of Revelation, a choice is presented to God’s people. Will you fall in with Babylon, or will your resist is the manner of Jesus? Will you place your hope in a system of injustice? Will you make an idol of a political party or a political figure, or will you have Jesus as your Lord?
It breaks my heart that what I see from a lot of church folk here in the US is the choice to follow the first path. So many people who claim to follow Jesus have placed their ultimate hope in something or someone who can’t deliver. And that has had an effect on the reputation of all of us.
So what do we do?
First, we shouldn’t be surprised that the sinful world around us is falling apart. We should be prepared for it, and we should be ready to point people to King Jesus through our love and humility. We shouldn’t rest our hope in Donald Trump or Joe Biden, in Republicans or Democrats. We should rest our hope in our true king.
Second, I believe that God has called our church to this city for a reason. I do not want you to think that we should just ride it out and let Babylon do its thing. We are called to make a difference in the world (for more on this, check out this sermon). We are called to show people what the new heaven and earth will look like, but we are called to do that by loving our King and loving our neighbors well. People should see us and see that our ultimate allegiance isn’t to a political figure or system grounded here on earth, but to a king who sits on a throne in heaven. A king who is coming back to put the world back together. A king who will ultimately defeat sin and put an end to Babylon (see Revelation 18).
So let us be a people who live in the pattern of Jesus the slain lamb. Let us persevere with hope in him. Let us be a people of prayer—especially prayer for the broken people in our nation.
(1 Timothy 2:1-2) First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people—for kings and all who are in high positions—that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
-Jon
Revelation 7:9–10
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
In my favorite book of the Bible, Revelation, there is this wonderful image. John is looking into eternity and sees a picture of a crowd of people worshipping. And he describes this group as a "great multitude, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages..." It really is a beautiful image. A diverse group of people worshipping King Jesus together. No racism. No division. No hated. No injustice.
But that's the world to come. That's not the world we live in right now. The world we live in now is full of racism, division, hatred, and injustice. Some of these issues that been a part of the fabric of our nation are again bubbling to the top. Our nation is fractured. The evidence is all around us.
Our denomination (The EFCA) has its headquarters in Minneapolis. Our president wrote two blog posts recently (link one - link two). In the first one he wrote, "We need to acknowledge what’s true: something is wrong. What happened in Georgia once again highlights a deeper issue of racial injustice in our country. (note—he wrote this first post just before the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.) Asian Americans have increasingly experienced racist behavior related to COVID-19. Immigrants fear long-term repercussions from limitations regarding legal immigration. Racism has not ended in our nation. It is here and now."
As followers of King Jesus, we know that the world is not supposed to look like this. We have hope in a better world and are brokenhearted by the fallen world we live in. But that doesn't mean that we just sit back, let the world burn, and get ready for the next. This hope should drive us to make a real and deep impact on the world we live in and specifically the people around us.
When I was a kid, there were toys in cereal boxes. One of the toys was a pair of red and blue 3D glasses. And on the cereal box was a picture that you could only see with the glasses on. If you looked at the picture without the glasses, you would see a jumbled mess. But with the glasses on, you'd see an amazing picture of Toucan Sam or Tony the Tiger or whatever. I think the church is called to be those glasses for the world. When people look at us they should see glimpses of the Kingdom of God the way it is supposed to look. They should see the beauty of God's kingdom. That includes racial unity.
From the get go we've talked about this at the Porch, especially with reference to the makeup of our neighborhood. We want our church to reflect the beauty of Revelation 7, a diverse group of followers of Jesus. But at the same time, we also know that we are fallen and sinful people. We contribute to the broken systems around us. We don't always love people who don't look like us. We have problems crossing cultures. We have blind spots.
So what do we do? We let our broken heartedness drive us to do two things: pray and grow. So for the next few weeks, we are going to pivot our Wednesday night Zoom calls to aim at those two goals. To that end, we are going to spend eight weeks reading and discussing Timothy Keller's book Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just. It's eight chapters long, so we'll take one chapter per week starting June 10th. It's a phenomenal book that tackles the gospel perspective on justice. How do we see the world around us? What is the response of the church? What can we all do personally to be those 3D glasses that help the people around us see hope in our King Jesus?
My prayer for our church is that we wouldn't just let this moment pass by us, but that we would use it to let the Holy Spirit mold us individually into humble and loving people and as a community into the kind of church that reflects his kingdom here in San Francisco.
I'll end with more words from Kevin Kompelien, our denominational president. "Racism is a sin that roots itself deep within the brokenness of humanity. Ending it in our country won’t happen by putting out a carefully crafted message or simply creating ministries and initiatives. To see racism end, we must all take the small and difficult steps in the Spirit’s power to address it in our relationships and our churches, and perhaps even in our own lives." That's the direction we hope to head in the next eight weeks together. I look forward to the conversation with you all.
-Jon
The last few months have been a whirlwind. We launched our church’s Sunday gatherings in early March and then had to call it quits for the shelter in place order. Since then, we have been meeting Wednesday nights on zoom, and now we are gathering online Sunday mornings for a recorded church liturgy as well. These last ten and a half weeks have been hard. It's hard to not see each other in person. It's hard to not sing the praises of our king together. It's hard to not gather to study his word. Everything about this is hard.
As shelter in place orders are being loosed and the country is moving on a path to open many things back up, I'll bet many of you are wondering what the plan for the Porch is. That's what I'd like to address here.
I'd like to share a few ideas with you that have helped my thinking as I lead us into our next steps. Since we are a church plant, we still only have one elder: me. We haven’t installed a board of elders (that's still a little bit down the road), and I honestly can't wait to get to that point. I'll admit that I am not a perfect leader, and so I appreciate your prayers. There was no class in seminary about how to lead a church that can't meet in person. In my 16 years of pastoral ministry, I haven't had any situation come close to preparing me for this. So I have been processing a lot of this with other Godly pastors here in the city. I am thankful for support from you and them.
The church is God's chosen means to expand his kingdom here on earth. And if you remember from our sermon series What is the Church?, the church is about the people and not a building. It's not just about a group of Christians meeting on Sunday mornings—although we love our church gatherings. When we share our prayer requests on zoom, when we watch the Sunday gatherings online, we are being the church. But we are also being the church when we check in with one another. When we support each other. When we serve our neighbors and friends. All of that makes us the church. And as much as it stinks to miss out on our Sunday gatherings for a while, we are still the church of God and even the devil will not prevail against us.
We talked a lot about this in one of our zoom meetings. It's such a bummer that followers of Jesus these days are known for demanding that they get their way and protesting when they don’t. Like I said in that zoom call, unless the government is specifically telling us that only religious groups aren't allowed to meet, we will support them. We will pray for our leaders and ask God to give them wisdom as they make decisions that will impact millions of people’s health and our economy. It is a hard job and they need our support and love.
The California state government just released guidelines for houses of worship to reopen starting in June. I'd encourage you to go read them if you have the time.
First, I'm not sure that we do pass the state's guidelines for houses of worship. We could maybe scrape by, but we would have to change a lot of things about how we meet (ie. not singing or reciting together, not sharing coffee, etc.).
Second, we don't want our focus as a community to be on our right to meet. We always want our focus in any situation to be love. We want to be known as a loving people. I think that the most loving thing we can do right now is continue to meet online. By meeting in person right now, we would be putting each other and our guests at risk. Until COVID-19 is wiped out, there will always be some level of risk, but I believe that right now the risk is still too high to justify starting our Sunday gatherings back up. So while it's a bummer to put off meeting for a little while longer, we are doing so because we love each other.
Step 1: Tiny Groups: Starting in June we want to organize into "Tiny Groups" of less than 6 people, preferably 3 or 4. These groups can meet together, mostly in public outdoor spaces with masks on to practice social distancing. It'll be a great way to build friendships, pray for one another, be in community, and still stay safe. And by keeping it to the same 3-6 people, we’ll be minimizing risk as best we can.
Step 2: Missional Families: We have one missional family already going, and we would like to launch a second one. When it's safe to do so with certain restrictions, we will get these groups back together to meet in person once a week while still practicing recommended safety measures.
Step 3: Sunday gatherings: After the missional families have been meeting, we will move towards starting our Sunday gatherings at the Powell location back up. When we do eventually start, things will be a lot different. There will be all kinds of safety protocols that we will have to abide by. The seating will be different. Communion will be different. Things won't just go back to "normal" right away.
When will this happen? Truth is, I don't know. We are going to take each of these three steps one at a time. So I really don't want to put a date on it except to begin the next step, "Tiny Groups."
How can I get into a Tiny Group? Two ways. If a few of you chat and want to be a Tiny Group, just let us know, and we'll put it down. If you want to join a tiny group, we'll put you on a list, and we'll group people together (mostly based on where people live). Sign up by emailing admin@porchsf.com
Are we still doing Sundays online? Yup. Until the week before we meet back at the Powell location.
You really don't have any sense of a timeline? Honestly, I'm desperately hoping to get back to in person Sunday gatherings by the end of summer, beginning of fall. But I really don't want to say that's for sure when we are meeting. There is still a lot of unknown. A doctor friend of mine recently told me she thinks there will be a second wave and a second shelter in place. So really, who knows.
We serve a powerful and a sovereign God. None of this is outside of his control. We are still his people, and we still have hope as we look forward to his second coming. As a people, let us not put our hope in the success of our little church plant, but let us put our hope in our Lord and our King. So while we are bummed to not be meeting, let's take this opportunity to look for ways to love the people around us. Let's look for ways to reflect his glory. Let's look for ways to speak truth into the lives of the people around us who have been shaken up by all of this and are looking for meaning in life. Let's look to serve our king by loving other.
I love you all and I thank you for your support as I try and lead us as a people. It's a joy to be your pastor.
-Jon
Here is a great article from Biblical scholar Michael Kruger. The end times stuff in scripture can be confusing and sometimes divisive, but Kruger explains why it’s so helpful in times like these. Take a few minutes and read through this. Hopefully it’ll encourage you.
There's a band called "Better Oblivion Community Center" that's led by Connor Oberst from Bright Eyes and Phoebe Bridgers. This band has a song called "Didn't Know What I Was In For." The last verse is about the futility of life and the distractions to escape it. Honestly, it sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes. Here are the lyrics:
To fall asleep I need white noise to distract me
Otherwise I have to listen to me think
Otherwise I pace around, hold my breath, let it out
Sit on the couch and think about
How living's just a promise that I made
We Americans are very good at distracting ourselves to stay away from our thoughts. We are not generally a philosophical and introspective people (which is ironic because we are all obsessed with ourselves). But that's all changed recently. There are world changing moments that shake the comfortable out of their beds. WWI. The crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Peal Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. 9/11. And now, Corona.
Our neighbors and friends who are not followers of Jesus are probably sitting at home right now, and for many of them, they are in a crisis moment. Death is real. The world is fleeting. Security is gone. Life is no longer easy. The bubble has been broken.
In 1945 the Manhattan Project finished the atomic bomb. On August 6th, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Bomber, dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and brought WWII to a close. On that day, the world changed forever. Most of us are probably too young to remember this, but the era that followed (the Cold War) was a time of real anxiety and fear. At any moment, it could all be over.
During the Cold War, with the threat of world annihilation on the minds of many, the great Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote a short piece called, "Living in an Atomic Age." That situation is not a 1 to 1 correlation with the Corona pandemic, so please don't see any of this as "Jon says not to worry about Corona." This article is less about what to do in times like these and more about how to think once you’ve been forced to really take a look at the broken world around you.
Here is a video from C.S. Lewis Doodles (a wonderful YouTube channel that just takes C.S. Lewis texts and draws over someone reading.) Take a few minutes, watch this, and then pray for you neighbor next door who may be taking stock of life and death, who is worried about their family, and who desperately needs to encounter the peace of our King Jesus. And then maybe take some time and think about your own life. How has this pandemic forced you to stop and think?
