Pastor Sara Hubble has written this week’s letter. We hope you are blessed by her thoughts this week.

This past Sunday morning in youth Bible study, we were finishing up a three-week unit on resisting temptation. Our lesson directed us to a passage about righteousness. I asked the group what they thought righteousness meant. One youth said, “I honestly don’t know.” Righteousness isn’t really a word that most of us are using regularly these days, is it? 

It is, however, an important word to our faith given that Jesus lifts up righteousness in the beatitudes and instructs his followers to seek first God’s righteousness. I shared this one-minute video from The Bible Project with the youth and I invite you to watch it as well. It defines righteousness as “living in right relationship with God, other people, and all creation.” 

Living in right relationship! Isn’t that the hope of our faith? That we are restored to right relationship with God through Christ, and in Christ we are drawn into genuine relationship with one another, so that together we might seek the good of the world (God’s beloved creation)? 

As I wrap up my time on staff at Huguenot Road Baptist Church this month, I look forward to continuing to worship and serve with this congregation. In discerning God’s leading to be planted here, a primary area of discernment was relationship. Is this a place where my relationship with God can be nurtured? Yes! Is this a place where I can invest in meaningful relationships with others? Yes! Is this a place where together we can seek to love and serve all creation? Yes! 

This is an ongoing work in each of us as followers of Jesus, isn’t it?  I encourage you this week to spend some time considering your relationship with God, others in our congregation, and our surrounding community. 

Is the Holy Spirit inviting you to move into deeper kinship in one of these areas? Perhaps by taking time to understand and ask questions about a passage or word in scripture that confuses you? Maybe by inviting someone of a different generation to sit with you in worship and taking time to hear what is going on in their life? Possibly by responding faithfully to a call you are sensing from God to invest in an area of our church’s life, ministry, and mission that needs attention? 

Friends, will you join me in praying for our church today? Let us pray together that Huguenot Road Baptist Church is a congregation of disciples seeking God’s righteousness above all else. May we each, with God’s help, commit to growing healed, healthy, and whole relationships with God, one other, and all of creation. Amen.