The picture shows beautiful cherry trees in full blossom.  Spring seems a long time ago.  But before spring arrived we were already dealing with the pandemic.  Spring ended and summer arrived.  We have days of sunshine as well as days of rain.  The seasons move us on but the pandemic remains.  We do not know when it will end, how it will end, when there will be a trustworthy vaccine, what life will be like next year,  what it will be like when we have been vaccinated.  I offer  many questions; you may have more.   But I know that we live in hope because  we have God who inspires us with hope.  God as Our Lord Jesus Christ came and lived on earth,  with love and compassion and in the hope that we will all follow his example.  
          I share words of hope with you.  Years ago I was asked to provide a message from Christian scripture for a big interfaith service in down town Minneapolis following the terrible Tsunami in South East Asia.  I chose the passage below from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans.
​           Romans 8: 31-39, from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.[w] 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
May you know that God loves you deeply, and may you keep this in your heart as you move forward in hope through these challenging times.
God bless you
Margaret+