Weekly Newsletter
A Note from Rev'd John
Dear St. George's,
We have no shortage of choices. Walk down almost any supermarket aisle and the possibilities can seem endless: dozens of kinds of coffee, toothpaste, cereal, or detergent.
Yet these are hardly the choices by which a life is measured.
This Sunday, Paul places before us a much more consequential choice. “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness,” he writes, “and put on the armour of light.” We are called consciously to “live honourably”—to turn away from quarrelling and jealousy and toward a different way of being in the world.
That choice has always had something counter-cultural about it. The earliest Christians lived within the immense power of the Roman Empire, surrounded by values and loyalties they could not always share. Their faith required something of them. As one writer puts it, “Real discipleship meant the rejection of real things.... It was not easy then and it will not be easy now.”
The counter-cultural calling can take very practical forms. Where our world rewards acquisition, Christians are called to generosity. Where it celebrates showmanship and bravado, we are called to do what is right, even when nobody notices. Where harshness and unkindness abound, we choose kindness. Where resentment takes root, we choose forgiveness. Where division comes easily, we seek reconciliation.
These may seem like small choices, but a life is made from them.
And we do not make these choices alone. At the end of Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus gives his disciples a remarkable promise: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Our faith rests firmly in that assurance. In the ordinary joys of life, and especially when life disappoints us, Christ remains present. We are loved by God, and from that love we learn to love in return.
As Paul puts it, we put on “the armor of light”—again and again, in the brief and precious lives we have been given. We choose light.
Rev. John Graham
