Love for Life is Live! Joy Hanna on CIVIC CLUB’s Latest

As a leader of our staff while Leo is out on medical leave recovering from COVID-19, I wanted to update you on where we are as staff. We have not forgotten how hard it has been, and continues to be, to be pulled apart by COVID. We have not forgotten how hard it is to face the vital conversations surrounding racial unrest in our country and world. We are committed to doing the work of remembering and working as we maintain City Church's mission of bringing the beauty of Christ into broken places. Right now the scale of hurt and brokenness can feel overwhelming, but then we remind ourselves that we serve a God who is able to do more than we can even imagine.

I am deeply troubled by the racial turmoil coursing through the streets of our country. I am grieved over the evil mistreatment and killing of George Floyd. I am angry about justice denied to countless others like him. And I am upset with myself and ashamed to admit that all too often I've been silent or apathetic about persistent racism in our country—racism before my very eyes.

In addition to City Groups, we are excited to offer another kind of small group this year at City Church called Focus Groups. Both kinds of small groups will be committed to loving God, loving each other, and loving the city. You are more than welcome to be in both as there are some differences between the two. 

One of the sweetest gifts one can receive in life is the joy of friendship. Though he didn't necessarily have friendship in mind, the words of Chile's nobel-prize winning poet Pablo Neruda still proves helpful; friendship does to the heart what "spring does with the cherry tree." What exactly does spring do to a cherry tree you ask? It causes it to blossom. A good friend has the unique ability to not only be a great companion, but also to be the very agent through whom you metamorphose into a radiant and flourishing human being.

The steady syncopation of our dishwasher has hardly stopped its rinsing and draining since the beginning of the quarantine. Spending our days pouring second cups of coffee and cooking more meals than usual has resulted in hazard pay for our little dishwasher that could. Among the many items that make the usual cleansing rotation—cramped, as they are, between the plastic prongs of the washer's shelves—leftover-stained Tupperware containers are by far the most common.