Bluegrass, Blessings & the Gospel

Dear Friends,

This is such an exciting time at St. Andrew’s. On Sunday we’ll have a bluegrass band at 9 am, a violin accompanying the music at 11 am, and a whole artistic/landscape/aquatic installation in the Narthex. Also we’re building catapults this week at C.L.I.M.B, blessing animals on Saturday, and having a fighter pilot come talk about spiritual warfare next week.

All of that ☝️. Exciting stuff.

But the most exciting thing about St. Andrew’s remains the gospel of Jesus Christ. We know that God exists, that creation is good and worth fighting to save, and that God has a plan of salvation and we are in it. We have the scriptures, which are not just a record of old stories about religious people, but a divine technology by which the past breaks into the present and acts on it through the power of grace. And we know that same grace makes it so the bad in our pasts doesn’t foreclose on the good in our futures, and that the pain in our present will be redeemed for joy in the glory to come.

That is really exciting stuff. The sort of stuff that makes even an ordinary Thursday exciting, despite all the day’s partially fulfilled promises, boring parts, and bad news. So delight in that gospel good news today.

The pet blessings, bluegrass band, and fighter pilots will be good too — but nothing is as great as the gospel.

In Christ,
Andrew+