A Letter from Bishop Chris (March 2023B)

Friends,

“Isn’t that the way it is? We think we can break all the rules (regarding healthy relationships) and still be the exceptions who make it. We think love will always be enough, but when we’re early in it and the chemistry is acute, we don’t know that love isn’t always a feeling. We haven’t yet learned it is as often an action when we’re momentarily bankrupt of affection.” -Beth Moore, All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir
 
I’m currently reading Beth Moore’s newly released memoir. I picked it up after reading an article in Christianity Today entitled, “When I was a Stranger in the SBC, Anglicans took me in.” Moore’s book is full of humor and brokenness and heartache and wisdom. The quote above is just one of many wonderful turns of phrase she employs throughout this engaging read.  
 
As we move through this Lenten season, and with Holy Week just around the corner, I found myself particularly captivated by her description of the grief and powerlessness that comes with sudden and traumatic loss. Likening this kind of suffering to the Garden of Gethsemane, she writes,
 
“It is the place of pleading and pores bleeding. That place where you enter in with Jesus and crawl on your hands and knees and fall on your face before God, begging for the cup of suffering to pass by you, but the chalice is so close to you now and the moon so full, you can see your reflection in the gold. Your face is contorted with dread, the whites of your eyes luminous with horror. Not everyone comes out… It is the place where those who believe come at their rawest, skinless and vulnerable, powerless, helplessly dependent, thrown at the mercy of a God they hope is listening. It is there a petitioner sobs, ‘I won’t live through this if this cup doesn’t pass. Do what you’re going to do God, do your will, do it above my own because you alone are God.”
 
Beloved in Christ, as we move toward the most holy of days, that Holy Week of wonder, dread and triumph, I want to encourage you. Know this: God is with you and He is for you. Whether your life is sailing along, or you find yourself near the Valley of the Shadow of Death, or you are on your knees in your own Gethsemane, Jesus is not far away – no matter how it feels. Be assured, through the cross he has triumphed over all that sin and sorrow and Satan can throw at you and through the resurrection he is the conquering Victor.
 
Blessings,
+Chris
 
p.s. As it is Women’s History month (as well as Lent), why not include as part of your seasonal spiritual practices reading at least one book by a Christian woman author? Not sure who to read? Here’s a few authors I’ve enjoyed: Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Sayers, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Ruth Haley Barton, Brenda Salter McNeil, Hannah Whitall Smith, Ann Voskamp. Which women authors and what books have challenged and benefited your life in Christ? I would love to know who they are. Send your titles to this email, and we'll share a list of suggestions in the next newsletter.