Rest in God

Beloved in Christ,

Bishop Loya is out this week, taking some well-deserved time away from work to be with his family. I admire that he guards and honors his time away, even as I know he delights in the work of being your Bishop.

It can be easy to believe that our work is too important, the issues too pressing for us to step away, to tend to ourselves and our loved ones. It can be easy to believe that because nothing that we hold is inconsequential. If it were, we wouldn’t be holding it.

But what is also true is that we serve a God who is active, who has purpose, who holds the beginning and the end and creates and blesses and calls forth.

Today, as we try to hold more chaos, more heartbreak, more that feels like it can’t be set down, let us be reminded, let us be rooted in the truth that we do not hold it alone. God holds all that we are holding, and God holds us. And if we need to set down for a time our grief or our work, we can. Because God can be trusted to hold all these things for us until we are ready to pick them back up.

As we hold yet another impossible act of violence, I commend to you the Litany of Prayer Concerning the Mass Shootings in Boulder offered by the Bishops of the Episcopal, United Methodist, and Lutheran churches in Colorado. 

I am praying for peace and blessed rest in God for each of you.

In Jesus' name,

Kelsey Schuster
Canon for Operations & Chief of Staff
Episcopal Church in MN