Hello, I’m Robin Jacobson, your minister at the Trinity United Church here in Vernon, BC. I MISS YOU!
It’s November 18th and we’ve just heard our Provincial authorities ordering the suspension of all in-person worship gatherings with immediate effect. We had begun our Sunday in-person worship meetings on a trial basis at the beginning of October and it was just wonderful to do that. We are now having to suspend them until we get the go-ahead from the Province. We will re-assess the situation after Christmas this year, at the end of December.
This Covid pandemic is just awful. Everyone is affected, either because of having been directly infected themselves, or worse, perhaps having lost a precious loved one. Our prayers go out to all of them. It has touched so much of our lives physically, mentally, socially, spiritually: how we shop, how we interact, how we worship. Mask-wearing, handwashing, social-distancing have all become the norm.
We are all hurting at so many levels. Anxious. Fearful. Insecure. We are not meant to be alone. Thank God for the promise of a vaccine that seems to be on the horizon. It seems that it can’t come soon enough.
But now it is Advent – the season when we begin to count down the Sundays to Christmas. Of course how we do so this year will be different, but Christmas is still our celebration of Christ’s presence birthed into our circumstances. With that birth comes always the promise of a hope, joy, love and shalom-peace that NOTHING – NOT EVEN THIS VIRUS – can ever destroy.
We are continuing to post online services on our website, YouTube and Facebook each Sunday morning. As you join us, however isolated and alone it may feel, please know that we do so together. Because of our unity in Christ, just because we aren’t physically in the same place no longer means that we are not together in every other possible way. BECAUSE WE ARE!
Also, please know that we are still always only a phone call or email away and very available for a chat or a prayer.
May you BE BLESSED this year despite your circumstances. Know that the love of God – the God of Jesus Emmanuel – is with you, and may knowing that love, somehow, be enough.