<html><body><div>Off we go again...……</div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Things seem to have an incredible
way or working together to nourish and sustain us. As the first writer on the
web site told us, in Native American Theology and Agriculture, corn, beans and
squash work together to support one another and to help each other come to full
fruit. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IF</u></b> they are put into
the ground together, then they can work to ensure the soil is nourished, and so
on. IF Caleb’s parents and Godparents and all of us work to ensure rich and
replenished soil; if we talk to the road worker sweating buckets over the
boiling hot tar as it’s laid on the road bed so that we’ll be able to drive
down Hill Street smoothly without having to weave around to miss the potholes;
if we interact with one another and recognise our interdependence, then all
will find encouragement, all will find hope, all will find the recognition that
each needs to grow into the full stature of Christ as God wishes us to do.</span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So we take another look into the
basket of life which is before us. We think about what may look like barely
enough for a single meal. We wonder how on earth we can take the rest of the
summer if this heat keeps up – and we don’t bother to think about people and
property being washed away on the East Coast; or the famine in countries around
the world; or the open warfare, the genocidal governments who have absolutely
no sense of what they’re doing because it only matters if people look alike,
and talk alike, and work alike, and die alike; if we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DON’T</u></b> think beyond ourselves, we are doomed.</span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Jesus said, “How much do you have
there?” and back came the famous reply. It doesn’t matter in the least <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HOW</u></b> the miracle happened. What <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DOES</u></b> matter is that it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DID</u></b> happen. People, perhaps like
the women in the bulletin photo who each put a hand on the basket-handle and
walked it to their left and to their right; people, as our baptismal covenant
requires of us, people take what they have and they share, because the dignity,
the humanity, the god-like-ness of every single other individual on this planet
compels us to do this. And, if as Italian scientists announced this week, with
excitement, that there is a vast body of water under the surface of Mars, and
there just might be some form of life there after all, no matter how primitive;
if that IS true, then our responsibility is for that life on Mars as well, to
ensure that it can grow as God intends.</span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The baptism of Caleb didn’t stop
within the walls of this room. The charge to him and to everyone is to burst
out of this room with energy and resolve, to cross the street to the person
standing or living there, to say, I have something in the basket of life with
which God has blessed me, and, if you’d like, I’ll share it with you.</span></p><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>