“”If you can’t?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”” – Mark 9:23 NIV
On a recent Tuesday, in advance of our weekly Wednesday get together with a faithful group of men, I received the following email from our pastor, which I have edited a bit for pithiness:
“Hi Guys,
Looking forward to Men of Virtue Wednesday at 12:10. This chapter is all about conflict and resentment – woohoo! But in all seriousness, it is quite good and helpful. He takes up the topic of “smug unselfishness.”
New Zoom Link. See below. The password is Jesus.
See you tomorrow!”
This is a group of men that I have met with weekly, off and on, for about 2 years. We’ve studied various texts, we’ve prayed for one another, we’ve laughed, we’ve been confused by what we’re studying, and we’ve seen other men come and go over the weeks.
We sometimes have technical difficulties, even at a time when connecting via Zoom, even for a bunch of middle-aged men, should be secondhand knowledge. And in our readings there is often times confusion and even the occasional inability to connect to or recognize God in the words we are reading. Thankfully, at the center of it all is our associate rector, there every week, bringing us together and leading us in study, but most importantly pointing us towards God in everything that we do.
In life there are lots of closed doors, locked-off areas of life, or “exclusive clubs” that we can’t access on our own. There are missed zoom calls, misunderstood conversations with loved ones, mistakes of judgement that lead us in the wrong direction. And there are plenty of times, more times than I am sure we care to admit, when we can hear God but we just can’t quite connect with Him or what He is saying. And then there are those times when we try to log onto the celestial zoom call and we can’t quite make it through the first screen. But keep hope all you technically challenged people out there just like me, the solution to getting on that call is simple.
“Jesus is the password”.
What Lies Before 