New Year’s Day Message from The Rev. Kaji Douša

Happy New Year! It’s a rare treat that the calendar allows us to have our regular Sunday worship on New Year’s Day. 2023 gives us this gift.Sunday morning, much of Black America will have just finished the discipline of Watchnight the night before. With Advent, the season of waiting, just behind us – we now watch. Watch for God. Watch for the Holy Spirit. Watch for what God has in store for our lives.

To give our staff some incredibly deserved respite, the church building will be closed on Sunday and our service will be entirely online. I cannot wait to see you there!

Pax,

Pastor Kaji

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:22—2:3 (Year A, p. 69):

1 Peter 1:22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have the love without pretense of children raised together; from a pure heart love one another persistently. 23 You have been born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible seed through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For:

“All flesh is like grass*

and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,

and the flower falls,

25  but the word of the Living God abides forever.”

This is the word that was proclaimed to you as good news. 2:1 Lay aside, therefore, all malice, and all deceit, pretense, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—3 if you have tasted that the Sovereign God is good.