I was rereading The Next Right Thing by Emily P Freeman and found this statement: “We can’t prevent storms from coming, but we can decide not to invent our own.”

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For Sunday’s homily, one text was 1 John 4:7-21. I said,

John is saying, in my own paraphrasing, “How can you say that you love the one who lovingly brought you into his family and, at the same time, turn around to other people that were lovingly brought into that same family and hate them. You don’t understand love.”

As I said those words, I was tempted to reference examples of the mean ways we are talking in comments and in campaign ads and in conversations. I refrained in the chapel. But I’ll mention it here.

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Last week was the third anniversary of the short book I wrote to help people know what to say (and hear) in the first minutes and days after a death. It’s called “This is Hard.” What I say when loved ones die. I wrote about ways people are finding the book helpful in my weekly newsletter, Finding Words in Hard Times. Please read 063 – This is hard, three years later.

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On Sunday, one line in our prayer was “Would you let us be your coincidence?” What I meant was, “God, can we be the ones who walk into the room and discover that our lives and the person’s life, our experience and the person’s need, our question and the person’s answers mean our conversation ends with, ‘that was no coincidence.’?”

It happened. More than once. I just wanted you to know.