Facing Fear

Well hello to you my friends and goodbye to 2021. This is Dick Foth with stories to make sense of it all and I've been just thinking these past few weeks about again what a year 2021 has been, what a year 2020 was before that. All connected to the things that I don't even have to name for us to know. But I know one thing that many of the uncertainties and ongoing uncertainties have generated in us and folks around the world, angst, anxiety, anxiousness, fear, being scared, whatever. And I'd sort of like to leave that behind if I could. No, I know it's not possible to leave it all vestiges of that. But I think we can get a different angle on it as we keep thinking about what it is that is both the opposite of fear and the antidote to it. Some years ago in the summer of 2016, I was in Washington DC and spoke at a congregation there in National Community Church and spoke on the subject of from fear to faith. It had been a tough week. There had been an African-American man that had been shot by the police in Minneapolis. There had been another African-American man shot by the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And there had been five police officers killed by a sniper in Dallas. So it was a very upsetting week. A lot of strain, not only in those communities, but across the country. And it seemed appropriate to speak to that theme and even though it might seem a little strange to end the year talking about fear, I'm really ending the year talking about what it means to have faith in the middle of all that. So here it is July of 2016, Washington DC and hopefully it will be of help. God bless, I'll be back in just a bit. Moving mountains, every morning in my home in Windsor, Colorado, I get up, fix a little cup of coffee and look out to the west. And I see mountains, we're about 10 miles from the Rockies, we're at 5,000 feet. And I used to tell people that here in DC, when I lived here for 15 years, people would come and you always give them tours. Ruth said I could get another job as a tour guide. I just like showing them stuff. I always drive down GW Parkway and say, that changes every time you see it. And colors, that's alpine glow on the Washington, all that kind of stuff. And I tell people, I used to give people tour of the monuments, now I give them tours of the monumental. Then in Colorado, there are 96 mountains, over 14,000 feet in the United States, continental United States, and 53 of those are in Colorado. I've often thought about those 500,000 or so pioneers that came out of St. Joe, Missouri and came across on the Oregon Trail between 1843 and 1869. What were they thinking when they saw those? How do we get through those? How do we get over those? And they discovered something that we see every evening. When the light hits those mountains in the morning, it looks like just mountains. But when the light is a different way in the early evening, it illuminates the various ranges and you realize that there are those mountains and then a valley, then those mountains and a valley and those mountains and a valley and those mountains. And it goes on forever. This is not just a mountain, this is a range of mountains. This weekend, I want to speak to you about fear to faith. How do we get from fear to faith? Because fear is not just a mountain. My experience is that I'm scared a lot of stuff over the years. I've been scared of a lot of stuff. Fear is a range of mountain. Anybody here ever been, well, I know the answer to that, of course you have. All of us have been afraid. I think it was a dozen years, maybe it was 15 years, Pastor Mark was younger anyway. And we were over at Union Station down in that theater and he was speaking on fear. And I'll never forget it. I can't remember the scriptures or anything, but I remember the illustration. The illustration was he had Googled it if Google was in there. However, he found out in his ferriting out of details. He said there are at least 2,000 different kinds of fears. Everything from fear of heights to the fear of peanut butter on the roof of your mouth. I remember it clearly. Do I have this right? And then he said, and babies, they're basic two fears. Are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises? Those are the two big fears. My wife Ruth has flown all over the world with me for 40 years and 10 years ago. She said, you know that flying thing? Why don't you do that? I don't want to do that anymore. But when he said the babies have the fear of falling, the fear of let she punched me and said, I'm normal. It's that fall with the loud noise at the end. I don't want any part of that. Why do we get afraid? Simple. We're human. That's what humans do. They get afraid. Psychologists talk about the fear of flight, syndrome and all that. But if you read the literature today, read the articles you say, they will tell you that we have never lived in a more anxious age generally, an age of unspecified anxiety. And a lot of times I'll ask young people, so what do you think? What's going on in your world? And they'll say, I'm overwhelmed or I'm troubled or not all of them say it, but you hear that a lot. There's this. Things could go wrong or I can't get it right or it's out of control or there's too much of this or that. And over the past few weeks, the anxiety in some quarters is not unspecific or unspecified anxiety. It's gotten very specific. We do have a mountain and I just want to say a couple of things real quickly about the events of the last few weeks and way before that for some. We are a country hurting this weekend. If one of us hurts, everybody hurts. There are whalings in Minnesota and Louisiana and Dallas, Texas because of fear that got rolling, if you will. And when there is injustice, it breeds fear and frustration and hate and hate lashes back with more injustice. That's just how it works. There are many voices that say, choose a side. In this moment, God is saying, choose my side. And my side is one that says, come let us reason together. My side is one of, I have made you ambassadors of reconciliation. We cannot solve everything. We can't get our heads around a lot of stuff. But what we can do is to say, God, you are more powerful than our devise. My Jesus who knows injustice took the lash of hateful men. We cannot be indifferent to fear or injustice or misunderstanding and above all prejudgements. To prejudge somebody on the color of skin or the color of uniform, to prejudge people, I'm just a grandpa talking to you here that I've seen a lot over the years. I remember when this city was on fire back in 1968. And things were happening right and left when we had curfews in the town I lived in because people were afraid. But fear creates mistrust and faith builds trust. It's time for us to let the faith work out. Faith without works is dead. One of the works is to pray. One of the works is to speak up. One of the works is to make a friend, to forget that judgment and just make a friend. I pray for transformed hearts because when we have transformed hearts, it doesn't happen overnight, but then there are transformed cultures and transformed cities. That's more than I was going to say. The God that we serve is bigger than what we're experiencing now. And when we band together, what is the one thing I can do? Can I take somebody who's different than I am, either in color or in roll? Can I take them to lunch? Can we have whatever it is? I just sort of toss that out there and say, Lord, help us to have your wisdom to know what to do, but let's not just stand by. Let's not be indifferent to what is real and what's happening. So we live in this anxious age, listen to our language. We want to have safe conversations in safe places with safe people. That's interesting language. We live in a world that's inundated with information. I know too much, I hear too much, I follow too much. The other night I woke up in the middle of the night and I turned on my newspaper app on my iPhone. I'm a sick person. I do that because it messes up the rest of your night. You find out stuff that happened in Tera del Puego or in Iceland or some other place. So I know too much, I hear too much, sometimes it's just too much. If I'm not careful, I get to the place that I'm afraid of what I do know and I'm afraid of what I don't know. The God comes along in the midst of that and says, unless we do something purposeful, fear wins. Fear is natural. It's a default place. If we don't choose something else, it chooses us. Let me say that again. Fear is a natural default. We heard it, fear of falling, fear of loud noises. I start out with that. If I don't choose to do something else, fear chooses me. Our eldest granddaughter, Ali, who's now 24 and married. When she was a little girl, she woke up one night. Her folks had taken her to sea world in California where they have sea lions and they have killer whales and all of this. She woke up in the middle of the night crying and her mom went into her and said, Ali, what's the matter? She said, I'm afraid of seals. She said, it's okay. I know we saw the seals and the whales. She said, I'm afraid of whales too. She said, in Jesus, here's the way Jesus is here with you and she said, I'm afraid of Jesus too. It's not good when you're afraid of Jesus too. Fear is not just a mountain, it's a mountain range and it wears lots of outfits. I'm not a fashionista, as you can tell, but you have the beige worry ensemble. You have the anxiousness outfit with its yellow top and matching shoes and then you have the bright red collection called paranoia. Fear just pops up when something bad happens. I was traveling some years ago. I was in a hotel in Salt Lake City, telephone rang. I had had some tests at the doctor's office in Arlington and they called and said, can you come see the doctor tomorrow? I said, I'm in Salt Lake City and I've driven out here. I can't. They said, well, we got the test results back and usually if they're great, they don't say, like, come in tomorrow and I said, well, can you tell me what the results are? She said, I'm a nurse. I'm not the doctor. I can't tell you that on the telephone. For four days, I knew I had something, well, I knew that it was cancer. I didn't know how bad it was. That's what I didn't know. And so for four days, I was just at various levels of scared. You say, but you've been with Jesus a long time, like, you shouldn't be scared. I know, but I was scared. So not only am I scared, but then you get guilt on top of that because you're not supposed to be scared, right? And I started looking at Scripture. I thought, maybe there were some guys in Scripture who were scared. And I think Adam was probably scared when he found out he was naked and hit behind the tree. I think Abraham was scared. He was going to be called out so he lied about his wife and call him a sister. I think Moses, when he stood in front of the burning bush, he was scared. He didn't want to go to Egypt. His picture is on all the posters and the post office there wanted for murder. He's scared. He didn't want to go there. You got Elijah. God's prophet. He's about this. A lot of times here. He has his huge day on Mount Carmel. He takes out all the bad prophets. There's fire from heaven. There's rain after three and a half years. He outruns the chariot. I mean, he's a stud. He's a man. And this woman, Jezebel Senzema note, text, probably Instagram with a picture of her. Picture of herself says, by this time tomorrow, you are dead meat. And it says that Elijah, the quintessential prophet of God, was afraid and ran for his life. And I'm saying, what's with that? Well, it may be spiritual warfare, but it's still warfare. And you get worn out. And it's easy for fear to show up. Sometimes I say, maybe if I were a disciple, if I just actually walk with Jesus physically, I wouldn't be scared, you know, because he's there, right? Listen to this text. Maybe on the screen, Mark, the 6th chapter, 47 through 52, verse, Jesus is just fed 5,000 people miraculously with a few loaves and fish, right? He's up on the hillside, and these guys are going across the lake in a fishing boat, probably 15, 20 feet long, pretty good size, and they're struggling because they're rowing against the wind. Listen to what it says. Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake. This is the sea of Galilee, and he was alone on the land, Jesus. He saw the disciples straining at the ores because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn, he went out to them walking on the lake. Well, why not? And so he was about to pass by them. That had freaked me out just that, just if he passes by. But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost, obviously. They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified. They just weren't anxious. They weren't just worried. They were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid. Then he climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely amazed for they had not understood about the loaves and their hearts were hurt. See, they hadn't even gotten the miracle part, and now he's walking on the water. It's just too much. It's too much knowledge. It's too much information. It's too much experience. It's too much wind in my face. It's just too much. But I love the phrase, take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid. I have a Jewish brother friend who's gone on now, but he was brought up in Brooklyn and he said, his mother always said to him, art. This was her mantra. Art, grow up, get a good job, and marry a nice Jewish girl. He said, I heard that so many times in my life I thought it was one word. This is what Jesus shouts in the storm, I think, because that middle phrase there, it says, take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid, but it is I, and the original language is echoing me, I am. Take courage. I am. Don't be afraid. Have a heart. Take heart. I am. Don't be afraid. I think it might have looked something like this. Take courage. I am. Don't be afraid. He had to have shouted that he was in a storm for pizza. Take courage. I am. Don't be afraid. Why don't you just say that with me? Take courage. I am. Don't be afraid. One word. Take courage. I am. Don't be afraid. In the middle of it all is the great I am. I said this dozens of times here in this congregation, but you guys keep moving through. You are going here and there, and it is different people sometimes. I am saying this to you, okay? I am is the most secure name in the universe. This is not a Western God. This is not I do that I do. This is I am, the God who is, when everything else goes up and smoke, he still is. When I don't know what to do because I have unspecified anxiety, he still is. Even specific stuff happens that just scares the bejeevers out of me. He still is. It is the most secure name in the universe. I am a fifth grader in Oakland, California, stark in my room, as a little scared. So I sang every song I knew because I had a theory that if I sang songs it would keep the stuff away. So I sang every school song, every church song, every, and pretty soon I would start calling my mom. It was a small bungalow house like a craftsman house from the 1920s, and I started calling my mom, mom, mom. You say, well, she is like 30 feet in there. Why don't you get out of bed and go, hey, if you are in the fifth grader in the dark in your room, you are not getting out of your bed to go find your man because the guy under the bed will grab your ankle. And if he doesn't get you, the one in the closet will. If you are not doing that, I would say, mom, I am pretty soon she would say, what is it, Dick? And I would say, oh, nothing, I just needed to know you were there. Now, I am seven decades out from that, you know, I don't call my mom anymore. I say stuff like, God, God, God, he says, what is it, folks? I say, oh, nothing. I just needed to know you were there. And then when I know he's there, I get more bold. I say, you see this, you see this thing right here? Do something here, do something, and he says, folks, you don't do anything. You just be still and know that I am. This is the God who is the most secure person in the universe. And when I stand in him, when I am in Christ, I start absorbing his security into my life. I was looking through some notes just the day before yesterday, and I came across a message that I spoke here on September the 9th, 2001. The Sunday before 9.11, and the title of the message was Security Unlimited. And I used the text of I am with Moses standing in front of the burning bush. Who shall I say a cent make tell him the I am has sent you? Forty eight hours after I preached that 9.11 happened. A week later, I was in the Capitol Rotunda. There's a little chapel that was built in the Eisenhower years off of the Capitol Rotunda where members can go to be quiet and pray and reflect. Any member can go there. And I was there with a little group of congressmen, two or three fellows. We met every Tuesday at four o'clock, and of course on 9.11 we didn't, but on the 18th of September that year we met. And when we came out, the two chaplains, Lloyd Ogilvy and Jim Ford from the Senate and the House had called for a prayer gathering for the members of the House and the Senate in the Rotunda, whomever wanted to come. And we walked out and the Rotunda, there were chairs and kneeling benches in circles all around the Rotunda. And that September sunlight was coming in those high places up there and it just bathed the room and gold and there was an officer there and an officer there and just the congressman and me standing there. And it was like a sanctuary. It was a moment I will never forget that on our greatest fear, the leaders of a nation were called to prayer and they showed up. Where do you turn when fear knocks at the door? Where do you turn when fear knocks at the door? I love that line that says, when fear knocks and faith answers, he finds no one there. Into this passage of Scripture, Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength in ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give away and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea though it's waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. God is within her, she will not fall, God will help her at break of day. Others are in uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice to the earth melts, the Lord all might he is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress. Why don't you read out loud with me those first two or three verses if we can put that slide back up? Just read it with me aloud, would you? God is our refuge and strength in ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give away and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea though it's waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. I think when we imbibe of truth, when we ingest truth into our lives and we pray that and we think that and we live there, we can wake up in the morning with that that unspecified anxiety out there. What do we need to understand about how fear works and how we overcome it? There is a passage in 1 Timothy 2 Timothy that reads like this. Call an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and keeping with the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. To Timothy, my dear son, grace, mercy and peace from God, the Father and Christ Jesus are Lord. I thank God who my serve as my ancestors did with a clear conscience as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy and I'm reminded of your sincere faith. There's that word, that faith word. First lived in your grandmother, Lois and in your mother, Eunice and I am persuaded and now lives in you, this generational piece. A lot of us sit here tonight, not because we woke up one morning and said, I think I'll just have a faith experience. I think I'll just be transformed. A lot of us sit here tonight because we had a grandmother who prayed when we were out wandering and didn't know which end was up. We had a mother who came and stood in the gap when I didn't know who I was and she came to remind me or somebody like them in our lives who came and walked with us. For this reason, Paul says, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. And then this phrase, for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid but gives us power, love and self discipline. The three antidotes to fear are power, love, self discipline or reason judgment. The word that's used here for fear is a word that means cowardice, something that makes me want to run. But the things that overwhelm it are power, love and discipline, judgment or reason. I've shared this story several times here before but I like sharing this story and so I'm going to share it again and it was when again I was like in the fifth grade. And I lived across the street from a school called Horus Man School and I was over there playing with my buddies after school one day. This is in the early 1950s and these big kids came over. They were like eighth graders, giants because when you're in the fifth grade, like an eighth grader is close to God. I just like to say that. He's a mean God but he's like God. And so this kid came over, he was intimidating us and he lined several of us up and was throwing the little knife, it wasn't anything, it was serious at all and I ran back across the street and as I ran back, my dad pulled up in his 1951 Chevy slant back. Some of you old people will know that car and he got out of the car and he said Dick what's wrong? Nothing. The parents know stuff. He said what's wrong? He said there's a big kid that was scaring us over there. He said where is he? I don't know where he is. I don't want to find out where he is, I don't know. He said let's go find him. I said no, no, no, let's not go find him. He said Dick, get in the car. My dad was six, two and three quarters and 240 pounds and he looked good. I don't know, it skipped a generation, I don't know what happened. But we get in the car and we drive up Ignacio Avenue, we're coming down the far side and there's that kid. He's walking home, I guess, and my dad pulls the car up beside him and he hops out of the car and he says son, son, excuse me, could you come in and I got out of the car on the other side and I'm standing back behind my dad over here and he said son, now Dick here says that you've been scaring him and some of the students, he said oh, we were just one. He said no, no, no, and he's looking down on him, you know, he said, he says you really scared him badly and he said, well, we were just, he said, my dad said okay. I get it, we're okay, but you need to understand something, if that ever happens again, you will not be dealing with Dick. You'll be dealing with me and I'm behind him going, yeah, yeah. Because when power is present, the fear goes away and here's the Jesus who comes in and says when the enemy comes after you, he's got to go through me first. He's going to get some of this if he comes after you. Bless the God that we serve, power overwhelms fear, love overwhelms fear. What causes a mother with a child in a burning building to break through a police cordon and firefighters and race into a building to try to save her child? Whether she can, what does that, love does that, love overwhelms fear. And if we can sit down and think some things through so I can help you understand or you help me understand why I don't need to be afraid. That overwhelms fear as well. Fear and faith can live in the same room if we don't do anything, fear will choose us. So we choose to trust the great I am. I choose to believe that God is. I choose to believe that God knows. I choose to believe that God cares. I choose to believe that God will act for His glory and my good. I choose to believe, like it says in Romans 8, that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to His purposes. I close with this story. I'm 35 years old living in Urbana, Illinois, the telephone rings and it's a small college that I graduated from in California and they call up and say we'd like you to consider letting your name stand for president of this school. He was a small college and I love the school and they said there's another person that's also being considered long story short. We went through the process and it came down to a vote and they voted five times, five different hours on this given morning. The trustees did and it was tied and then some guys had to leave. They voted again and the other gentleman got the vote and the board chairman called me back and said so and so has been chosen as the president and I said I know him, he's a great guy, he'll be a great president of the college and I hung the phone up and I turned to my wife, turned to Ruth, I said Ruth, I just had this uncanny feeling I'm going to get another phone call. Three weeks to the day my telephone rings and it's the chairman of the board saying the other gentleman after prayer and thought has decided that he should not come would you reconsider. I said and if you've never been second choice you need to try it, it's good for you. Never be scared of being second choice, I just like to say that and so I said I need a couple days and I hopped in the car and drove home. I walked into the house and Ruth was standing, we had one of these split landing and she's standing at the top of the stairs and I said Ruth you'll never guess who called. She said who and I said the chairman of the board at the college and she said my quiet Ruth, oh dear God, now she's not used to exclaiming like that and I said why are you saying that she said two hours ago I was standing needing dough for pizza at the counter and this thought came through my head you're going to be the wife of the next president of Bethany Babuka and she said I thought as the devil saw her rebuked it and then the voice came again, my timing is right, I am faithful, I am true and when she said that I knew it was over, they hadn't voted, they hadn't voted again but I knew it was done but I was anxious and I went in the in the bedroom and I'd laid on the bed and I started coming through scripture just you know one of those moments where you do that you know one of those just trying to find some said if I'm supposed to do this and you've done this thing with Ruth why am I so anxious and I felt like the Lord turned me to Philippians too where it says that Jesus let go of his glory, didn't hold on to it like a prize but took on the cloak of a man, took on the form of a man and died of criminal's death and then I felt like the Lord said and it wasn't a voice but I felt like he impressed me and said your problem is you know you can pastor you're not sure you're you can president and you're afraid to fail aren't you glad I wasn't and I'm saying oh I wish you hadn't said that I called them they voted they chose us I went what I didn't realize is that they I don't know if I hadn't looked closely enough but they they they had a debt that needed to be paid in 60 days and was a hundred thousand dollars and this is 1978 so that's big money that's like millions now and and so they had a gathering with all of these pastors and all of delegates at this big meeting in the municipal auditorium in a place called Reading California and they said stand up and share some of your vision for the school and I just stood up I'm this just turned 36 year old guy and I said I want I want to have a college where people have cool heads and hot hearts for God I want them to always be learners I want them to be practical mystics people who are two inches off the floor but not off the wall you know I that's sort of thing and then I said and and by the way we need a hundred grand in 60 days and I sat down and there'd been a lot of back stuff a lot of junk going on in this in the in this area and and a pastor jumped up and said we'd like to give a thousand dollars for that need somebody else said we'll give a thousand somebody said we'll give a thousand and within 20 minutes they had thirty two thousand dollars raised we had to stop because they had an ordination service that night and the next morning we came back and they said let's say a few more words I said a few more words and they started again and youth groups were saying we'll do 50 another one said I'll we'll do a hundred is like poker I'll see you and raise you and whatever I was yeah and and they just and finally a young man came walking down the aisle and he had tears running down his face he said I've always wanted to go to the college but two years ago we were ready to go and my wife was pregnant and last year we were going to go and she had kidney surgery and now this year we're getting ready to go again and she's pregnant and so and so I'm going to commit two hundred dollars but I don't have two hundred dollars and he went back and he sat down and an old man in the back row jumped up and said you just got your two hundred bucks son somebody jumped up and said and we'd like to pay for those baby expenses and somebody else jumped up and said we'll pay for the first semester somebody else said second semester we got that boy through his junior year in college in five minutes and the place went nuts just nuts they were whistling and cheering and shouting by one o'clock that afternoon they had raised a hundred and fifty six thousand dollars they had paid for two babies they had given each other monies it was this unbelievable thing and the guy comes to the microphone and said you've got all my money I've been here like four times you got all my money but I got to tell you that I've said some things about leadership I shouldn't have said and I want to confess and ask your forgiveness and the chairman of the board is a little shaken and he said well sure you know and then all of a sudden they're five deep at these microphones because they were you know and finally an old cowboy sitting in the front row from Chao Chila California said Mr. Chairman point of order said I just want to say this if we keep this up we're going to be here all night he said apparently a lot of people here need to repent so I'd like to make a motion for repentance would that be an order in the chairman said well yes yes it would and he seconds to that and he said all of you here who need to repent because you've said crummy stuff and backbiting and gossiping you need to repent stand up and like 200 preachers and their wives stood up and he banged his gavel and said you are forgiven and the place went crazy and somebody said to me isn't it tremendous that you had the faith to come and do this thing I said I didn't have I was scared it was that guy over there the guy that stood up and said we'll give a thousand dollars the first guy that when he stood up in faith the Holy Spirit said here's an opening and there he came and to this day if you go to that part of California say do you remember April 1978 in Reading Municipal Auditorium people will look back and say we never were part of anything just like that it was a moment when the spirit showed up because somebody in faith trusted God and the mountain was moved here is a range of mountains called fear when we trust God we put our whole weight on him he carries this over the mountain range of fears because he loves us the most he is stronger than all he and he has the big picture big picture in his sights so we close tonight I'm gonna pray but I'd like you just to do something with me real quick on the count of three I just like you to take a deep breath and just imagine yourself just putting all your weight on Jesus you say that is so cheesy I know it's not cheesy he says cast all your burdens on me and I'll care for you so in the count of three let's just take a deep breath and do that one two three thank you Lord that we rest in your care that your vision for us is way bigger than our vision for ourselves and for the one who walked in here just as a last resort scared to death we pray that he or she will know your renewal for the one who has been feeling fear and can't quite put a finger on it thank you for touching that one tonight thank you that you are the great I am and we stand in that in Jesus name. well all of that being said I'd like the privilege if I might have just sort of praying as out of 2021 with this thought Lord help us in the coming weeks and months to be folks who when fear knocks at the door faithful answer and find nobody there thank you that we have the capacity to trust even in our most anxious moments and may 2022 be a time where rejoicing will be on our lips where laughter will be there more than it has been in these past months we are grateful to be able to spend this time together and we ask these things in Jesus name amen that's it my friends I'm out for 2021 catch you in the new year God bless