Dear Friends,

On Saturday morning at St. John’s Church the tower bell could be heard along Devens Street; its sound marked the beginning of the funeral service for Florence Johnson, who loved and served tirelessly in Charlestown, the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the nation. The church was filled to capacity for a community to give thanks for the life of a remarkable woman. The service began with the tolling of the bell, and ended with a bagpiper’s tribute, played from the street outside the church. In between those two sounds were tributes to a life well-lived, prayers of both grief and gratitude, and assurances from scripture of God’s promises to us.

Occasions such as Florence’s funeral remind us that life is a gift. It’s natural in those moments to consider all that we have been given, and in doing so, we count as precious our own lives, and those of our loved ones. We don’t ever know how many days each of us will be given, but we do know we’ve been given today. With what sound does your day begin? With what sound does it end?  What occurs between those two sounds?

We are now well into the season of Lent, a time when it’s customary to talk about what we have “given up.”  True enough. Yet also embedded in these forty days is the invitation to create a meaningful life, a purpose through all that we do and say. There is much about our days and our lives that we cannot control. There will be challenges we confront, including tragedies that seem unbearable; there will be love we receive, including blessings that seem unimaginable. We cannot predict what will occur. But we can make a choice as to how to respond.

In Psalm 121 we hear, “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth for evermore.” – a promise of assurance, there at the beginning of each day, to whatever sound we awake, and there at the end, to whatever sound beckons us to rest.  This promise—and it is a promise—equips us to offer ourselves in love and service to our families, our friends, and the larger organizations and communities of which we are a part. On Saturday, we remembered the life of a beloved member of this community who did just that, living out the full measure of her days.  Today, and every day, we are offered the invitation to do the same.

Faithfully,

Tom