Stay Open | September 13, 2026

Hey everyone, and welcome to the brand new Burnett Church podcast.

My name is Tim, and I'm your host and the pastor of Burnett Church.

Today's podcast uh is the audio from part one of our series called Reactions Speak Louder, in which we start to unpack how our reactions affect the world around us and also say something about our relationship to ourselves and to Jesus as well.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

It's really obvious on a Sunday like this that like change is a part of life, isn't it?

Right?

We can see the new kids in the new rooms, their new leaders, their new grades, new stages of life.

It's really obvious.

But have you ever noticed that um, you know, we say often, I'll have to figure out how not to fall down this today.

I feel like I'm gonna get tripped by one of these streamers here.

Have you ever noticed how like on a day like today, we're focused on potential?

Right?

Like you see all those kids are like, wow, the potential of the next generation.

That's a really exciting thing.

But if somebody starts saying that you have potential when you're like 35, that's not really much of a compliment anymore.

Right?

Sometime in your 20s, you know, potential is no longer a compliment.

Right?

Nobody looks at a grade six student and says, I hope you are exactly the same as you are today 10 years from now.

Right?

Our great hope is that you'll be so full of potential when you're 37 years old.

That's not how we look at it.

Eventually, we want to see growth.

Right?

And while it's obvious for kids, it it can be a bit difficult for us because there's no move up Sunday for adults.

I really wish there was.

That was a lot of fun.

Maybe we should pop confetti every once in a while and celebrate the things.

But there's no like really obvious one Sunday where we focus on that.

And so you can kind of get a little bit lulled into um, you know, the ordinary movements of your life of faith.

Unfortunately, I'm not gonna send any of you an email that says, congratulations, you graduated from intermediate Christianity.

That isn't how it works, and so it can be really difficult.

We talk about this behind the scenes.

How do we measure that people are actually growing and changing here?

It can be a tough thing for adults.

And in fact, sometimes, if you stick with the journey long enough, you can get the impression that you've arrived.

I don't know if you've ever met somebody who feels like in their spiritual life they feel like they've arrived.

That they were they were who they are, and that's all there is to it.

Take me as I am, this is who I am, is the language that we'll use when we get to that point.

But I think God is never finished with us.

That we never finish growing in our relationship with Him and in the person that He wants us to become.

In fact, that's what some of the earliest followers of Jesus concluded as well.

Paul in the book of Philippians, chapter 1, verse 6, says this the God who began a good work in you is committed to carrying it forward until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6

Now, that that that phrase, the day of Christ Jesus, can be a little bit strange to us.

What do they mean?

Um, you know, it really means this: like until Jesus returns, which is like at the end of all things, right?

Which means um God's work in you is probably never going to be finished this side of eternity.

God's work in us is gonna continue until the day of Christ, until the end of all things, until our last breath, God has a plan for us and our growth.

And I want to be really clear this morning, I'm not gonna make us have a conversation about working harder to become a better Christian.

Right?

What I hope this morning is for us, now that we've celebrated with the kids and been reminded that change is a part of life, is that God has a plan for our growth.

And that some of the most important things He uses are things that we don't see coming ahead of time.

So if you've been here for any length of time, in fact, if you look on the chair in front of you, you'll probably see a sticker that says, Come as you are.

It's kind of like our invitation.

We want everyone to know that you can come here, regardless of what your religious background is, regardless of where you are in a faith journey or not with Jesus right now.

We want you to know that you're welcomed here, regardless of how you dress, what you believe, what you did yesterday.

We don't care.

We're really happy that you came, and so we're gonna keep inviting anyone and everyone who wants to, come just as you are.

We do follow that up with another statement.

And it's changed a little bit over time.

In the early days, I used to say, come as you are, but don't stay that way.

Right?

Come as you are, but don't stay that way.

Growth is implied in the journey.

Nobody arrives.

These days, I'm trying to be a little bit more positive.

Uh I tend towards the sarcastic, if you haven't noticed.

Um, so so it's always a work for me to like, how how positively can I say this?

Look, come as you are because everybody has a next step to take.

Nobody's done.

Nobody in this room has completed their journey, hopefully.

Check on your neighbor.

Is everybody still alive?

If they are, they haven't finished their journey yet.

In fact, one of the things that we also say is like, there's only one kind of person who's not allowed at Burnett Church, and that's the perfect person.

There are no perfect people allowed here.

So if you are perfect, you're not.

Okay?

So what we want to have is a place where you can come with no pretending and no prerequisite and no spiritual resume to fall back on, and recognize that we all have steps to take at least on our look, if you don't believe in Jesus, that's okay.

Can we at least agree this morning that you have a step to take on your journey to becoming more human?

And that maybe, maybe this guy Jesus, who we're still talking about 2,000 years after his death, knew something about what it really meant to be human.

Maybe that's the enduring legacy, or one of them, that Jesus has.

So, regardless of where you are today, I think we can say, hey, come as you are, but don't stay that way.

Come as you are and and and look to take a step, right?

I don't presuppose to know what your step looks like, but I'm pretty sure that we've all got one to take.

And so one of the most important things and one of the most overlooked things, especially in this time in history, one of the most important characteristics that one can bring to this journey is simply this the ability to stay open.

Right?

Last year, right around this time, I did a series on things that God often uses to help people grow.

Things that we would want you to be on the lookout for on your journey.

Okay?

And I think all five of them are gonna come up here on the.

I'm not gonna take time to speak through all of them.

If you want, it's all on YouTube, you can go back.

But here's kind of the summary of what we talked about last year that I want you to remember.

And in fact, we actually have a book in our connection corner.

If you really get like inspired by this, come out and see me, I'll give you one.

Um, five things that God will use to grow your faith.

Right?

Something you learned.

We talk about practical teaching, is really important.

Right?

Sometime a truth became clear to you and that helped you take a step.

Someone that you know, these are providential relationships.

Almost like God put that person in your life so that you could grow.

Sometimes a parent or a friend or a mentor or a teacher, sometimes a Sunday school teacher or a worship leader, sometimes a pastor or a coach.

You know, um, personal disciplines, things that you do regularly that help you to understand, know, and draw closer to God.

These are the classic ones.

These are the ones that you probably have heard some pastor say to you over and over and over again you should read your Bible, pray, be generous, right?

Have a Sabbath, come to worship, you know, the regular things that you've heard over the course of your life.

For a lot of us, it ends up happening when we get involved in some kind of ministry.

And this is where, like, you know, we have a stance here where it, again, it doesn't matter where you are on your journey.

There are some spaces and some roles at our church that we reserve for people who have kind of been mature in their journey with Jesus, but a lot of them we just say, hey, we want you to come and be a part of a team.

We think that as you you embody this attitude of serving others and investing in others, that God often uses that to change us.

We think we're giving something to somebody else, but in fact, we end up receiving more than we ever give.

And lastly, you know, something happened in life, a pivotal circumstance ended up happening in our lives.

You know, sometimes that's something really happy, like the birth of your first child.

You know, that will change you.

That will change you.

That will teach you things about yourself that you've never known before.

And if you're anything like me, in the dark parts of the night when you're up and you'd rather not be, you reach out to God and go, God, what are you trying to say to me today?

Can I just go to sleep?

You know?

Right?

Sometimes those are difficult things.

Loss and suffering that we go through, tragedies that we experience.

And often what we do is we find that in those moments, in those moments, life gets thin.

The space between the spiritual and the physical becomes easier to navigate.

Those categories are not magic, they're just an observation, right?

There's they're simply those of us who have who have been trying to help people grow in their relationship with Jesus for some time.

To understand and to be on the lookout for some things that God uses.

The reality is God often uses things, people, and circumstances to help us grow.

Sometimes they're very ordinary things.

Sometimes they're really difficult things.

Frequently, it's a person.

And occasionally it's something that comes into our life that we'd rather not be there at first.

Sometimes we only recognize that God is doing something in retrospect.

I don't know if you've ever had that experience before where you realize looking back, it's like I wouldn't have chosen that for myself.

I wouldn't have chosen that for myself.

I wouldn't have chosen that circumstance.

Sometimes I wouldn't have chosen that person.

But God used them, God used it to teach me something.

And I am stronger and better for it in retrospect.

Right?

So sometimes we ask the question in our spiritual formation life, what should I do next?

What is my next step?

Sometimes you know what a better question would be?

Sometimes the better question would be, God, what might you want to do next?

Help me to stay open to whatever it is that you want to do.

And I want to come back to last week's message and just talk about Peter a little bit.

Because Peter is a guy whose life change is so obvious in Scripture, right?

You remember Peter is the guy we talked about last week who uh followed Jesus until Jesus got arrested, then denied Jesus, and then after Jesus comes back and is resurrected, he's full on for Jesus.

He changes.

His cowardly ways are gone.

He's almost like the lion in the Wizard of Oz.

His cowardly ways are gone, and he grows and he becomes a man of courage.

This morning we're gonna open the scripture at Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

So if you have a Bible with you and you want to open there, you can.

If not, I'll put everything that I'm gonna read up on the screen.

But in Acts chapter 10, let me just set the table for you.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

By now, Peter's not a new follower of Jesus here, okay?

Peter's been on the journey.

Peter has left everything that he had and the life that he lived before he met Jesus to become a follower of Jesus.

Peter has at this stage in his life defied gravity and walked on water, so the scriptures tell us.

Although it was fairly brief, and he failed in spectacular fashion.

But he did it, which is more than I can say.

Right?

Peter failed spectacularly in other ways, right?

Denied his best friend, walked away from him entirely.

And then he saw the risen Jesus.

And that changes Peter forever.

Peter is now the man who gets up in front of thousands and talks in such a way that it encourages thousands to follow Jesus.

And he becomes one of the most important leaders of the Jesus movement after Jesus is gone.

So if anybody could reasonably think, I've arrived, I understand how this works, Peter might be that guy.

Right?

Peter might have a reason.

And then we find him in Acts 10, with all this experience still changing, still growing, still moving forward in a way that Peter did not expect and was not initially open to.

Let's take a look at it together.

We're gonna start at verse 1.

It says this at Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian regiment.

So he's a Roman soldier.

He and all his family were devout and God-fearing.

Those two sentences shouldn't go together at this time.

The Romans are the bad guys in the Gospels, right?

The Romans have taken over Jerusalem.

They're oppressing the Jewish people.

And so finding a Roman soldier who's a follower of God does not compute for the original readers.

Okay?

This is like the bad guy getting a part in the story of redemption.

We aren't told about all his life choices, but we are told that some of his life choices are confirming that his faith in Jesus is genuine.

Here's what it says.

He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.

Okay?

And this is just a little bit of bonus material for this morning, but um, if you want to know whether somebody's whether your, let's just keep it personal, whether my faith is genuine, whether my faith is intact, faith has a way of changing the way that we behave.

Okay?

So Christianity is not a religion based on, hey, if you do the right things, God will love you.

God offers his love freely.

That's in fact every, just about every other religious system that I can think of, is hey, if you do enough of the right things, God will love you.

Christianity is the one where it says, hey, when God's love enters you, things will change.

And you will start behaving in ways that people don't expect.

It says this about Cornelius.

One day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision.

He distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius! Hopefully that scared some of you.

Because Cornelius was scared.

He stares at the angel in fear.

If you ever meet somebody who says they saw an angel, ask them this clarifying question.

Were you afraid?

And if they say no, doubt whether they saw the angel, okay?

Um, because uh every time, every single time, you cannot find a time in the scriptures when an angel shows up and appears to a human being and they are not petrified.

It happens to all of us, okay?

So the angel is there and he calls out to Cornelius.

I don't know if he yelled at him or not, but let's just pretend that he did.

Because he scares him and he startles him, and then Cornelius, you know, gathers himself together and says, What is it, Lord?

Cornelius is sort of vaguely aware that this being that he's talking to has more authority than he does.

And the angel answered, Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.

Now send men to Joppa to bring back here a man named Simon, who is also called Peter.

He is staying, confusingly, with Simon the Tanner, whose house is by the sea.

Okay?

This is like uh MapQuest before you had MapQuest, or Google Maps before we had telephones.

Okay?

Go to Joppa, find the house of Simon.

It's roughly by the sea, which I'm sure was a very specific set of instructions.

God has seen the way, Cornelius, that you have changed.

And he's now choosing you to help somebody else change.

So I need you to get Peter to come here and see what's happening in your life and the life of people around you.

So when the angel who spoke with him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants, and he told them everything that had happened, and he sent them to find Peter in Joppa.

Meanwhile, in Joppa, this is what we find about Peter.

At about noon the following day, right?

So obviously we're we're uh Caesarea and Joppa, or it takes some time to travel between the two.

So all this happens uh in the life of Cornelius, and then the next day, this is what happens to Peter, about noon the following day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter goes up on the roof of his house to pray.

And he became hungry and wanted something to eat.

And so while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.

I call that a nap.

Um, but he fell into a trance.

Happens at about four o'clock every day if I watch baseball.

Uh he saw heaven opened up and something like a large sheep being let down to earth by its four corners.

It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds.

And then a voice told him, Get up, Peter, kill and eat.

And Peter says, Surely not, Lord.

I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.

So so presumably somebody speaking on behalf of God has come to Peter and said, Hey, Peter, here's some food.

Kill.

Eat.

And this is an extraordinary response.

So Peter, Peter is aware enough to know that whoever's voice this is, because we're not told whose voice it is, but whoever's voice this is, again, much like Cornelius recognized, this is somebody with more authority than I've got.

Okay?

This is somebody in a higher station than I am, because he calls them Lord, right?

Says, surely not, Lord.

That isn't actually the reply you give to your boss when they ask you to do something, right?

If you would like to stay stationed where you're stationed, you usually answer your boss in the affirmative, hey, Peter, go do this.

Sure, boss, no problem.

I'm gonna do that.

In this particular case, Peter's like, no way.

I know, Lord, that you asked me to do this, but I'm not gonna do it.

There's a contradiction inside those words, right?

No is a very strange response here.

Peter has these categories that have been reinforced in his life from the very beginning of his journey with God, right?

That some things are clean and some things are unclean, right?

It was largely based on food and uh and heritage, right?

So Jews were one kind of person, Gentiles, everybody else, unclean, right?

They're not following God the way God has told us that we need to follow him, right?

And in this moment, God is starting a conversation between Cornelius and Peter that is designed to change things forever.

And God is not in this asking Peter to become less serious about God, right?

He's not asking Peter by lowering, changing the standard to become less serious about God.

What God is doing is he's asking Peter to become more serious about others.

And he's doing it in such a beautiful way.

He basically comes to Peter and is like, hey Peter, you've been denying yourself bacon for far too long.

Bacon is a beautiful thing.

Let's put bacon back on the menu.

But it was a, it was, it was a it was a it was a vision, a dream that had larger consequences than just.

The deliciousness of bacon.

Right?

What I want you to see here is that sometimes, sometimes our formation is going to interrupt and disrupt things that we felt were not interruptible, were not open to negotiation.

They were handed down to us by very well-meaning people, and every generation has its things that are changing.

You know, when I went to church as a kid, the things that you really weren't allowed to do were go to the movies.

It was okay if you watched that movie on a small screen at your house, but it was not okay if you went and watched it on a really awesome big screen at the theater.

For some reason, the size of the screen determined the evilness of the show.

Okay?

I still don't understand it.

But people just seem to accept it as what we were supposed to do.

It's a great example of a thing that's like, I don't know, somebody probably was well-meaning when that came out.

But it wasn't actually something that like God asked us to do.

It was a thing that we created, and oftentimes the thing that God is trying to disrupt is He's trying to get the stuff out of the way.

Human beings are so efficient at creating religions.

Like we're so good at making up our own rules that God never asked us to make up.

And even if God did ask us to make them up, see, here's the really interesting thing: it's God who made the rules in the first place.

So he could change them if he wants to.

That's what's happening here.

God is disrupting something that once upon a time Peter and all the people who came before him held on to, like we have to do it this way.

And God was saying it's time for a change.

And I want to be really clear, because this is not an invitation to make everything okay all the time.

Right?

This is what people want to do.

They want to swing pendulums, right, and live on the outsides of the pendulum.

Right?

Like the only acceptable thing is either we're all in and so we're hyper-religious and wound up about everything, or we're over here and nothing matters and everything's on the table.

I don't think that's wisdom.

I think it is wisdom to carefully consider what God is asking of us.

In every generation, every generation has the opportunity, every generation has the calling to figure out what it looks like to faithfully follow God in our days and our ways.

Every generation has to do this.

Notice though, there's some really important check and balance that's going to come in here because Peter doesn't get to make up the rules by himself, and Cornelius doesn't get to make up the rules by himself.

Okay?

Here's what it says.

In Acts 10, 17, it says Peter is still wondering about all this stuff.

He's still trying to figure out the meaning of it.

And Cornelius' friends show up at Peter's house.

Okay?

This detail matters.

He goes downstairs, he meets them, he listens, and then he travels with them and enters Cornelius' house.

Not because he understood why he was there, and not because it was acceptable for him to be there.

And Peter actually says in verse 28, you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate or visit with a Gentile.

So Peter has followed these men without having any sense that God really wanted to change anything yet.

But he knows that God is calling him to something, and so instead of being paralyzed by what he's uncertain about, he is motivated by what he is being invited into.

This is how Peter finishes that sentence.

But God has shown me, you are well aware it's against our law, but because God took what he was showing Peter and combine it with what he was showing Cornelius, God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.

So the vision looked like it was about bacon, but it was about something so much better than that.

Peter discovered that it was all about how we're called to view each other.

And notice the process that God goes through to form Peter.

Not only through a vision, right?

I've had so many people come to me and say, I had a word from the Lord, and then what they say next is the most outrageous thing I've ever heard.

And maybe that's happened to you.

I had a word from the Lord for you.

Did you ever notice that?

The word from the Lord is usually for somebody else.

Anyway, I had a word from the Lord for you, and then they start telling you, and you're like, I don't think that was from the Lord at all, actually.

That doesn't sound like his voice.

He talks to me sometimes.

It doesn't sound like that.

See, what happened here is that Peter and what was told to him was affirmed by what God told somebody else at the same time.

And so it took the wisdom of two people to discern whether God was actually at work.

That's a rule that you should probably put into your life.

If somebody comes and says, the Lord told me, great, did he tell anybody else?

Is there somebody else who can confirm this before I change my life for it?

But because God does do this and he does affirm it in this somewhat spectacular way, right?

The two men decide together that God is up to something.

See, it's really interesting because I think if you imagine, like Peter gets his vision and then he's invited to Cornelius' house, you can imagine how in Peter's head he was probably going to Cornelius to give Cornelius something that he needed.

Have you ever had this experience?

You started serving because you thought you were gonna give something to somebody else, and you found out actually it was God who was trying to change me by sending me to do that.

God's also using Cornelius to change Peter.

It's worth remembering sometimes that the person you think needs your wisdom may have something that God wants you to learn.

The place that you enter to serve may become a place where God ends up serving your heart.

The circumstance that you would rather not enter into might reveal something and do something in your life that won't happen any other way.

The question that has been unsettling you like a worm in your mind may become the beginning of deeper faith rather than a deconstructed faith.

And Peter, while he's there with these men, starts talking about Jesus and telling them the story that they've never heard before.

And before Peter can finish, God says he sends his spirit to rest on that place and on those people.

And this is as shocking as anything else, because God's spirit isn't supposed to interact with those unclean people.

Peter didn't orchestrate it, he didn't manufacture it, he didn't sing the worship song over and over and over again until people felt the Spirit of God in the room.

He just told the story, and God moved.

And then he had to respond to what God was doing that was outside of all the categories that he had been handed throughout his life.

Long after Peter meets Jesus, starts following Jesus, gives his life to Jesus, is changed by the resurrection.

Long after that, Peter is still learning, Peter is still changing, Peter is still being formed in ways and through things that broke down his own categories.

And if Peter can still be formed at that point in his life, perhaps none of us should ever be surprised when God still has something new to teach to us.

God was in this moment doing something that still ripples out to us thousands of years later.

In Acts chapter 11, Peter returns to Jerusalem, and he now has to give account, he has to explain what happened and why did you go to this guy Cornelius' house?

Acts 11 · chapter mention

You're not supposed to go there.

And all of a sudden, the church that Peter's a part of has some reconciling to do, some processing to do, some thinking to do.

Peter tells the story, he explains the vision, he tells them about the spirit coming and falling on Cornelius and his whole household.

And the response in Acts chapter 11 is basically: look, if God has done this, we can't deny what God has done, then who are we to stand in the way?

Acts 11 · chapter mention

Maybe we're the ones who need to change.

And a few chapters later, the question becomes totally unavoidable.

Because non-Jewish people all over the Mediterranean basin are coming to faith in God.

And this is really messing with all the Jewish people who came to faith in Jesus.

Because this is not supposed to happen.

And so church after church after church and community after community after community are having to wrestle with this same question.

And it gets out to Paul, and Paul gets asked by Paul, the guy who, like, you know, when they split up the Mediterranean and said, okay, Peter said, I'm going to do my ministry here in this one place in Jerusalem.

And Paul came on and he colored in the map and he said, I'll take everything else.

Paul was a guy who was like taking the message of Jesus and the story of Jesus all over the known part of the world at the time.

And so this problem reaches Paul, who's several hundred miles away from Jerusalem.

And they don't know what to do because their answer is, well, if these guys are going to come and they're going to be a part of our religion, they have to do religion our way.

Which included getting circumcised.

It's the worst religious sales pitch of all time.

Right?

Hey, you want to be a follower of Jesus?

Great.

There's only one more thing you lack.

I would be out, personally, like if it was me.

It's a big question for them.

We can laugh about it now.

It was a massive question for them.

It was an enormous piece of what they had been handed.

And so they send Paul to Jerusalem and they have this big conversation.

And you guys have heard me talk about this before.

The conclusion, as they have this conversation together, is this a phrase, a verse that has become so central to the kind of church that we believe God is calling us to become.

It's found in Acts chapter 15, verse 19.

Acts 15:19

It says this we should not make it difficult for people who are turning to God.

We should not make it difficult for people who are turning to God.

Acts 15, although we've talked about it in isolation before, it didn't appear out of nowhere.

Right?

Connect the dots.

It appears because God talks to a non-Jewish Roman soldier who then connects with one of the most important apostles, one of the most important followers of Jesus in all of Scripture.

And through their interaction and the forced change in one small community, God has sparked a change that needed to happen in every community of Jesus following people throughout the rest of history.

That we would understand that God does not show favoritism when it comes to race, creed, politics, clothing, or any other external measure that we want to impose on people's spiritual growth.

We should not make it difficult for people who are turning to God.

That epiphany is made as God forms Cornelius and God forms Peter, and they together help to form the church.

In other words, God forms us to form us.

Each one of us has a part to play in each community of faith, in each place.

God is calling us to live a life together as He changes us.

And I want to give you a bit of a heads up.

Over the next few months, we're going to be exploring several different ways that God will want to grow and shape us.

They're pretty standard practices of our faith.

Things that I think as we enter into this next season, we would be wise to spend some time looking at, both personally and collectively.

If we're going to do the work that God has us to do, if we're going to accomplish whatever God wants us to accomplish, we're going to serve in the way that God wants us to serve our neighbors and friends and community.

He's going to continue to form us.

And what I want us to do as we go through this process, I'm not going to lay them all out for you here.

I'm not going to tell you what they all are.

You're going to have to come back.

Hopefully you come back, you know.

But what I am going to ask you to do is stay open.

Don't presume the answers before we start.

Right?

As we talk about community and relationships, stay open.

As we talk about serving, stay open.

As we talk about generosity, stay open.

As we talk about your spiritual growth and disciplines, stay open.

What would it be like if we get to the other side of this fall?

2027.

And this was a fall that we could look back on and go, man, it was marked by this group of people, this us, being open to whatever God wanted to do in us and through us.

What could happen?

And I want to end just with a reminder.

This is still a come as you are place.

It's always a come as you are place.

When we start talking about spiritual formation, yeah, look, if what you bring to the table is a journey to becoming human and you're observing, I want you to do that.

Because I believe that in the steps that we're taking as a church, which you might not be ready for yet, but there are steps for you as a person to take.

So maybe our prayer could be really simple.

I'm going to invite our musicians to come back.

We're going to sing one kind of final song, which really ties in and has the spirit of what we've been talking about this morning.

It is going to be one song, guys, okay?

One song together that kind of gives us just a moment of reflection and solidarity.

But as they come, would you bow your heads?

I want to I want to pray with you.

Something really simple.

Jesus, we're here.

Keep working in me.

And keep working in us.

Help me to be open to what you want to do.

Help us to make room.

Even when it challenges our assumptions.

Help us to stay open to the work that you're doing in us and in us.

In Jesus' name.