United Church people share “100 Words of Hope” for these times of high anxiety and change.
We're inviting United Church people to share "100 Words of Hope" that draw from deep spirituality to speak to these moments of high anxiety and change in the church, Canada, and the world.
We invite you to share your own 100-word reflection, poem, or prayer that conveys hope and faith in these times here.
Together, we can inspire each other to live out the call of the church to deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring justice. We are not alone.
God’s Unstoppable Love
A minister in the early church, Paul, said it well for me, "No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation can ever separate us from the love of God, revealed in Christ Jesus..."
Two-thousand years ago or today, this is world-changing. Even in moments when humankind's worst impulses are enormous, there is a real, vital, overwhelming impulse that draws us towards healing and wholeness—God's love—and there is nothing that can stop it.
It may be hard to believe, it takes a lot of work, but we live in that hope.
—The Very Rev. Dr. Richard Bott, Grace United Church, Burlington, ON
Alive with Divine Presence, We Are Not Alone
We are not alone... we live in God's world.
This affirmation of our faith reminds us not only of the Divine Presence who accompanies us through the joys and the challenges, the mountaintops and the shadowed valleys of our personal and collective lives. It also alerts us to the fact that this whole world is teeming with a wide abundance and variety of persons, only some of whom are human. We are also companioned by the tree-persons, the four-legged persons, the rock persons, the finned persons, the feathered persons, as well as all our ancestors.
Truly, we are never alone.
—Shawn Sanford Beck, GreenSpirit Chaplaincy, nested within Grosvenor Park United Church, Saskatoon, SK, Treaty Six Territory
The World We Long For
I believe Jesus will do what he can to fix our world and be a better place so that we can live in harmony and treat people the way we want to be treated.
I would hope it will be a better place to live in. I would hope all the people that live in our world will come together and be as one. I would hope the world and everything in it will be what we all want, hopefully to live as one.
And all will be loved as one.
Jesus, please give us all the strength we need, thanks be to God.
—Agnes Martin, First United Church, Owen Sound, ON
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.