Month: March 2025

March 30, 2025   First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

Acts 4:32-5:11

³² Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ³³ With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. ³⁴ There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. ³⁵ They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. ³⁶ There was a Levite from Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”). ³⁷ He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 

But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; ² with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ³ “Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? ⁴ While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” ⁵ Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. ⁶ The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. 

⁷ After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. ⁸ Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.” ⁹ Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” ¹⁰ Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. ¹¹ And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

I’ve been thinking this week of the time a church I was leading decided to lay carpet in their reception room.  It was a great idea – the room had been tiled, maybe before World War II, and the tiling had long since hit its use-by date.  We used the room for a million things, but it was the week where we did three funeral receptions in five days that finally made us get going.

There’s a whole other story about what we did to that room, once we got clear about how we wanted to focus one welcoming others, but today’s story is about what happened when we had to choose the color of the carpet… was it going to be light grey with red flecks?  …or dark grey with red flecks.

Yes, I’m sure you’re wondering why that was a hard decision and, in fact, it really wasn’t, except that it was.  You see, we were mostly set on one color, but on the morning we were to make the decision one of our most respected women leaders came into the meeting, all jazzed up, and passionately plead for the other color… and she persuaded everyone to go for it.

Then we all went home and heard the rest of the story. Between church and our meeting, our leader’s husband had discovered her on the church’s phone talking to her lover.  They had the kind of unpleasant conversation you can all imagine, and then she came to the meeting and talked us into her favorite color.  She had then left the church, her husband and their toddler son, to go off with the love of her life.

Parenthetically, I can report that the following week, the women of the church met again, and this time, chose the other color…. But this story isn’t about the color, it’s about the woman.  Because, you see, even though every one there thought she’d done the wrong thing in leaving her husband and son, no one quite knew what to do about it.

We didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t know the ins and outs of her marriage.

We didn’t want to say anything because we had all done wrong things ourselves.

We didn’t want to say anything because we too had been hurt; we’d lost a friend, a leader, felt betrayed.

I imagine the same thing happening to the people of that early church when they heard about Ananias and Sapphira.  I imagine that they were leaders, that they were liked, trusted, admired… and then it turned out they weren’t what folks had expected, and the folks gulped and stood in the shadows wondering what to do.

The story tells us that being seen as important was so central to Ananias and Sapphira that when Peter named their deception, the shock of being exposed caused them to die.  Maybe that’s another reason we hesitate to name the wrong when we see it – we’re cautious about what being exposed will mean for the perpetrator and the family?

And yet, in there, is a truth we need to realize.  It is not good for a community to close its eyes to wrong that’s being done, whether that’s within the community or in the world outside the door.

If God is in charge, we have a responsibility to name wrong as wrong, to say the truth we see.

Here’s another church story, this time from a reliable friend.  My friend once pastored a church that was losing members – and this was before that was true of so many churches.  Their church regularly brought in new people, who usually stayed maybe as long as six months before they quietly dropped out.  It didn’t take long to realize, once they saw the problem, that they had a member who would capture those newbies, tell them mean stories about other members, and eventually would start to make mean remarks to them.  The healthiest new folks left first, but over a period of time, just about all the new people walked back out the door.  Then the mean member started in on the church’s leaders.  Again, leaders began to leave the church.  Over a period of two to three years, they lost every leader under 50 but one and attendance on Sundays dropped from over 80 to right around 30. 

They tried every thing they could think of… quiet chats with those who had left, kind letters, even sitting down with the mean member.  Every deacon’s meeting was consumed with dealing with this person and the aftereffects of the continual attacks.  It became clear that if things continued in this path, the pastor would leave and the church would close.  Finally, the mean member attacked the one person who’d been most actively mounting her defense; losing that support, the church was freed to name and take seriously the viciousness of the attacks and they expelled her from the church.

It’s been more than twenty years since that happened… it took a long time for the church to recover, because those folks who’d left didn’t come back.  

Now, here in Massachusetts we’ve seen what happens in churches when we don’t name evil.  The Roman Catholic Church in this area may never recover from the betrayals of their lay members to save the reputations of evil priests.  

There are, I believe, no times, no places where closing our eyes to the wrong is good for an organization or good for people.  Pretending the bad is not happening, or telling lies to cover it up only makes things worse.

Closing our eyes to evil not only destroys trust, but it warps reality.  If God is God, and if we have decided to follow Jesus, then it is our work to stand up for the good, to be people who can teach the difference between good and evil.  We have been called, raised up and trained to stand up for kindness, compassion, justice, fairness.  

When we see the values of diversity, equity and inclusion trashed as cons which promote injustice, we have an absolute obligation to speak up, to say that it is always and in every case wrong to build communities where all the people cannot participate.

Years ago, when I first joined the church, up in Vermont, I remember asking one time, if Jesus’s death and resurrection had conquered evil, why did evil still exist?  Our pastor said that while the final conquest of evil was assured, the day-to-day struggle continues.  That is as true today as it was when he first said it.

We who believe that God is in charge have accepted the call to name evil, to work for good.  Let us continue to build a world where love is found.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 23, 2025           First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. The Rev. Dr. William Barber II, White Poverty, P76

James 4:11-17:  ¹¹ Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another speaks evil against the law and judges the law, but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹² There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? 

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

One of the hardest things for us to figure out these days is just how to live among each other.  I don’t think I need to describe the challenges to you.  So, let’s be clear; we are divided politically and those political divisions are biting deep into our personal relationships.

That’s why, during Lent, I felt led to spend the season talking about the deepest problems of our land…. Not to promote a particular set of political expectations, but to say, again and again, that there is a particularly Christian way of dealing with those differences.

You see, right now it’s not just ideas about the best way to manage the federal government that divide us, or even beliefs about the most appropriate allies we should have, or whether or not to start a shooting war with Canada… those are all political decisions, and we have our ideas… but underlying those political opinions are beliefs about the nature of human beings, and that is our business.  

Here’s the thing:  Christians believe that every person is important.  Every person.  That’s because we believe that every person is made in the image of God.  God did not choose the tall blond Dutch folks to be the image of God (and Dutch people _are_ tall, and blond). God doesn’t just choose the wealthy.  God chose everyone.  You can be short, fat, ugly and poor, and God loves you.

Because God loves everyone, and everyone is made in God’s image, we Christians believe it is essential for us to care – not just theoretically, but actively – for everyone everywhere.  Sure, that’s impossible if I’m the only one in the world doing it, but it’s not impossible when you think of all of us together, each figuring out how to reach out in our locality and how to band together to meet needs across the world.

During Lent we’ve been listening to two voices – that of the Rev. Dr. William Barber, a pastor and professor, ordained in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and a man whose passion throughout his life has been the challenge of racism and poverty – and the second voice has been that of the Letter of James.

Probably written about fifty years after the Resurrection, by followers of James the brother of Jesus, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, it speaks to a continuing challenge for the followers of Jesus as we struggle with just how and why we live out our faith in the ways we do.  This letter is a wonderful counterbalance to the idea that all we need to do to follow Christ is say that’s what we’re doing and, optimally, get baptized.  

James believes and teaches that words without deeds are meaningless.  Pastor Barber believes and teaches that the least among us matter.

And I also believe that living with, recognizing, supporting, and honoring those who are the least among us is an absolutely foundational piece of our faith.  Our political beliefs do not allow us to step aside from our Christian convictions.  

You could put it this way.  Jesus Christ teaches us, and his brother James reinforces that teaching – that every person matters, that it is an absolute requirement of our faith to have empathy for others, and to move that empathy from “I feel your pain” to some kind of response.

Sometimes the response that’s needed is one that involves the whole congregation.  We made that kind of response when as a church, we voted to become an Open and Affirming Church.  We continue that response by having pins available for individuals who are called to do so to wear them in public, to share the commitment to equal support and recognition of the LGBT+ community.

Last Sunday, like many of you, I picked up one of the pins and put it on.  After church, on the way home, I stopped for lunch at the Applebees in the Blackstone Valley Mall in Millbury.  My waiter thanked me for wearing the pin.  I’ll probably never see him again, but for that short time, he saw someone who was willing to see him as a full human being.  It was a little thing, but powerful.

Sometimes, we show our compassion for others, our willingness to learn what’s going on by reading a book like White Poverty. It’s an easy read, well-written, clear – and it’s a hard read, because it makes you think anew – do we really know what’s going on in our world?   Barber believes that the powerful among us use racism as bait to divide poor whites from poor blacks so as to keep them from uniting and demanding fairer treatment. 

In today’s quote, he says “The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. P76

Because poor people are divided, they are invisible.  This past week, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, suggested that the Social Security Administration could stop sending checks and no one would complain except the fraudsters.  He said his mother in law wouldn’t complain; she’d just assume it’d come next month.  

There are a couple of problems here:  Lutnick is a multi-billionaire; I think it’s fair to assume that his m-i-l won’t run out of money if her check doesn’t arrive.  So, apparently he thinks that no one on SS needs the money.  But the Social Security Administration says that 12% of men and 15% of women depend on SS for at least 90% of their income.  I know that for me, when I’m not working, it’s 50% of my monthly income.  But Lutnick can’t see the poor among us; he thinks everyone has the financial resources he has.  And he’s not alone.

As Christians, we are called to pay attention to our world.  That might mean noticing the neighbor who buys a lot of cat tuna – when you know she doesn’t have cats – but cat grade tuna is a lot cheaper.  Friskies Cat tuna is $2.56 a pound at my Shaws this week, while the cheapest human tuna, StarKist chunk is $4.00.  It might mean realizing that a neighbor is home bound because their car died, or because they can’t drive anymore.  It might mean realizing that those 2 job families are doing because they can’t make ends meet without both jobs.

Both James and Dr. Barber want us to see the poor among us, and to recognize that they are as much a part of God’s world as those of us who have resources are.  This is the Christian way, whether we are Republicans, Democrats or independents.  

We are people of love, empathy, and action.  May we continue to live up to our faith.

Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 16, 2025  First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA

The Virginia Slave Code of 1705 fully consolidated the system of racial and hereditary bondage.  The story that said people with darker skin are essentially different from people with lighter skin was codified in law and turned into a myth that would tell white people in a new land who they really were.  .  . . When we take race as a given, it’s possible to bemoan the death machine of the Atlantic slave trade … in the same way we mourn a tornado—without a twinge of remorse.   White Poverty, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, p 46

James 2:1-13  — My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality. ² For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³ and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” ⁴ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵ Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶ But you have dishonored the poor person. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into the courts? ⁷ Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? 

⁸ If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well. ⁹ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹ For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹² So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³ For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Have you noticed?  Have you noticed how quick we all are to be angry these days?  And angry over things that don’t really matter?  

The store is out of fudge ripple ice cream, and people yell at the stocking clerk, as if the world will come to an end for them if they can’t have their preferred flavor.

Or  —  More seriously, someone writes into Dear Abby (or one of the thousand versions) and every commenter asserts angrily that the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s totally misunderstood the situation, and they know the right answer…  I’m right, you’re wrong.

Or – more painfully, your son finally gathers himself and tells you he’s gay, and the response is to be angry at him that he didn’t tell you sooner.

Over and over and over, I see people jumping right into anger, deep criticism, dismissal, as the first (and often, last) step in a conversation, whether it’s in person or online or some other media.

We don’t trust each other right now.

And I’m going to suggest that not only is that mistrust evil in the sight of God, but it is the deliberate and inevitable end of choices that have been made over the centuries right here in our land.

Our opening quote today marks the starting minute when we began to be separated.  In some ways, it’s the American version of the story of Cain and Abel, which was the original “farmers versus cattle ranchers” story…. Who’s more loved by God, the man who plants or the man who hunts?

In this case, tho, the underlying question is financial.  It seems pretty clear that the reason people invented chattel slavery – holding another human being in perpetual servitude – was to get cheap labor.  Slaves don’t need to be paid.  And the easiest way to do that was to say there was something so terrible about Black people that they owed white folks their lives, their labor.  And the lie went further – it said that it was ok to enslave Black people because that meant that the poor white people would remain free.

It turns out that if you really push this you can divide people six ways from Sunday, and when they’re divided, they’re also powerless.  

Not just by race, whatever that is, but also by gender (who gets to decide, men or women?), nationality – aren’t people whose ancestors came from England better than those whose ancestors came from, say, France or Hungary? Or even by what they do – whose more respected in the town – the farmer or the accountant, who doesn’t smell of cow manure?

The people who invented this mockery may not have realize that they were laying the groundwork for poisonous relationships, but that they did.   It turns out that while the politicians worked to establish our land on the basis of e pluribus unum, the planters and manufacturers were building on the basis of divide and conquer.  And those two theories, two ideas, are still at war with one another, still grappling like Cain and Abel, to control the direction of our community.

It’s no wonder we struggle to trust one another.  It’s no wonder we fail.  

Here’s the thing, though.  James says it’s all wrong.  How did today’s lesson begin?  My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality…  James claims that Jesus calls us to be a community of equality, mutual welcome, universal acceptance.

Right now, it’s clear that we’re in a world where acceptance is conditional.  If you come from “somewhere else”, you’re not going to be accepted easily.  If you look like you come “from away”… you’re not welcome.  

Last week, the US Army removed the history of the World War II unit, the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team from its web site.  The 442^nd was the most decorated combat unity in history, for its size and length of service.  And it was mostly made up of second generation Japanese-Americans, many of whom had family in American internment camps for fear they were secret Japanese spies.  US Senator Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, served in that unit, losing an arm in combat.  

Lest you think this a one-off, maybe a mistake, the Washington Post reports that Arlington Cemetery has removed links from their web site that pointed visitors to famous Black people, famous women, famous Hispanic folks who are buried there.  Yes, the bios are still there, but if you are a Black person, wanting to visit and show your children famous Black veterans, you’re out of luck.  The bios don’t mention race, so you’d have to know all that before you visited.

It looks like it doesn’t matter how brave you are, how willing to die that democracy might survive, if you are not a white man, you don’t count.  

James says that’s wrong.  We all matter.

When you try to pretend that some of us are more acceptable than others, a life of endless competition is created.  It’s competition not just for a blue ribbon, but for a decent life for you and your children, and so it’s no wonder that it leads to anger, hatred, and – eventually – physical harm.

And James says, clearly, that it is not God’s way, not the Jesus way.  Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom… he writes.  Is it not the rich who oppress you?, thus proving that some things have not changed in the last 2000 years.  Those who have, want to hold on to what they have, want to get more, because they never have enough.  And those who don’t have, they scrap among one another for survival.

But that’s not who we are.  We are committed to working together, to creating community where all are welcome.  We believe that whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.  We live that out within this building, by our acceptance of the Open and Affirming Covenant.  We live it out in the world by the way we interact with those whom we meet.

We stand up against this constant battle with love.

We stand up against this constant battle with kindness, generosity, welcome.

We stand up against this constant battle with all the patience we can muster.

It’s not easy; sometimes it may not even be safe, but it is our calling, to live out the love and justice of Jesus Christ, here and wherever we may go.

May it be so.  Amen.

© 2025, Virginia H. Child

March 9, 2025, First Sunday of Lent                                                                 
First Congregational Church of Brimfield MA

Proverbs 19:17 – Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full.

James  1: 19-27   ¹⁹ You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, ²⁰ for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹ Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 

²² But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³ For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴ for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵ But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. 

²⁶ If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Do you remember, was it last week?, when Elon Musk asked all government employees to email his office with a list of five things they’d done in the past week?  Well, it led to a lot of us making similar lists, and I want to share one such list with you, written by a fellow pastor.

Has everyone composed their “what I did last week” report?

• I helped offer warmth and safety to 48 people who otherwise would have been out in the bitter cold. Someone who didn’t come in froze to death. This ministry is the most important thing we do.
• Helped feed a couple hundred meals. Our good partners do most of the work; I’m just there to offer an ear or a prayer or a coat or wool blanket or warm socks, a bag of shelf-stable food for the homeless, or a quart of frozen leftovers to the housed. 
• Taught a Bible study. We’re beginning Thessalonians: Paul is telling them to persevere, even when the world around you values different things than you do. My favorite part so far is when he tells them they used to be imitators of their teachers, but now they’re a shining example for others to imitate: the gospel is echoing throughout their region because of their faithfulness.
• Preached a sermon on the sermon on the plain, in which Jesus finds blessings in the darndest places, in poverty and in hunger and in shed tears, before telling us to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us. 
• Talked to so many people who were scared or hurt or angry or grieving. I don’t know if a single one is less scared or hurt or angry or grief-stricken now, but hopefully at least they know they’re loved.

Jamie Spriggs 2/26/25

That list didn’t go to Elon Musk; it was shared among friends on Facebook, by the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fall River.   Fall River is one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, just a step or two healthier than Springfield.  In some lists it #3, with New Bedford #2, and Springfield as #1, the poorest city in this commonwealth..

Now, later on in Lent, we’ll do some conversation about poverty, but today what I want to look at with you is a more foundational question.  Just why did Pastor Jamie Spriggs spend her week preaching, teaching the Bible, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and housing the homeless at a very cold time of the year?

Her church is one of the big, old, beautiful buildings in downtown Fall River.  It has a gorgeous interior, but when you look it up on Google, what you see is notice after notice of free meals, clothing ministry and so on.  

Why do they do it?  There aren’t a lot of people there any more; it’s no longer THE prominent church in the city.  You don’t go there to be seen.  Why do people, and not just the Baptists, but people from churches in the surrounding communities, come into First Baptist to serve the struggling population of Fall River?

Why do we do what we do?

Because, you know, what we do here is not all that different from the good folks of Fall River.  We don’t have the poor population they do, so we’re more like the outlying churches that come into the city to run a dinner, but we’re feeding people.  And if we knew of a need for warm clothes, we’d answer that call.

But why?  I think it’s really important for us to be clear about our motivations, to talk together from time to time about why we do what we do.

There are all kinds of special reasons that people do these kinds of things – it’s a way of maybe honoring a parent or grandparent, maybe a way of saying thanks for help received, maybe you need community service hours for high school, or you’re going for Eagle Scout?  That’s why someone might do this, but why does the church sponsor the program in the first place?  Why does doing those good things honor someone, or please them?

And now we’ve gotten to why you heard a reading from Proverbs, that said Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full.  

We do good because it pleases God.

That’s all there is to it.  God has given us life, community, purpose – and all we have to offer in return, in gratitude, in love, is our ability to be people of love, generosity, compassion, in God’s name, for the glory of God.

We do good because it pleases God.

I’ve been reading the new autobiography of the Christian teacher, Tony Campolo, who died earlier this year.  Campolo, who was an American Baptist teacher, pastor, church leader, wrote that God extends to us the gift of salvation, and then we reach out, hoping to help our world grow closer to God’s intention for us.  Being a Christian is not just about being baptized, or being saved, but about growing into people who build better communities.

We do good because it pleases God.  

During Lent this year, we’re going to be looking at some of the pressures in our world that make it hard to do good. . . not just things like a short temper, but the way our society is organized, how our world nurtures hate.  Each week, starting today, we will have some intentional time after the service, right here in this room, to talk about what I’ve said.  The forces which drive us apart are subtle, hard to see, and it is in our conversation that we can begin to see more clearly.   

I hope you’ll grab a cup of coffee and a cookie (or 2 or 3), and stay to talk together.  Let’s talk together about why we do good, and what kinds of good might best help Brimfield and surroundings be healthy and thriving.

For our final words today, let me read James again, verse 22:  …be doers of the word and merely hearers who deceive themselves…  Don’t just say yes, yes, and then crickets.

Love God, serve your world, be Christian.

Amen.

©  2025, Virginia H. Child