One thing I do when I read Scripture is imagine the story as it unfolds. I like to see, in my mind, the entire scene, filling in the details as I go along. Our reading from Isaiah 6:1-13 today is one of those stories we think we already know. In seminary, this story was so central to our identity, the school gave out t-shirts quoting verse 8. Isaiah received a vision of an over-the-top God. God, sitting on the throne, is high above Isaiah and wearing a long robe. The robe is so large; the Temple can only hold its hem. Isaiah was so overwhelmed by this vision of God; he could only confess who he truly was. God's presence was a mirror for Isaiah, showcasing how far from perfect Isaiah was. God, however, had a plan for Isaiah and didn't let Isaiah's imperfection stop Isaiah from spreading God's word. God transformed Isaiah, touching his lips with a burning piece of coal. After God did this, God asked, "Whom shall I send?" And Isaiah responded, enthusiastically, "Send me!"

Or did he? Our translation gives us an exclamation mark at the end of Isaiah's statement because, I think, we want Isaiah's response to be enthusiastic. We want to believe that experiencing God's presence will make us want to say a big "yes" to God. But, as you were imaging this scene, how many other people were in the Temple with Isaiah? We have seraphs flying around, the hem of God's robe, Isaiah... and that's it. In this vision of God, there is no one else present. So when God asked the question, there's no one else who could answer. We could imagine this scene with Isaiah looking around, noticing he's by himself, and saying, "Here am I...send me?" And God, whether Isaiah was enthusiastic or not, still commissioned him to bring God's word to all people.

I honestly believe that we want an experience of God to propel us into a new Christ-like way of life. We want to meet God face-to-face and, without thinking, shout out, "send me!" We want this so badly, we end up using this desire as an excuse to do nothing. If we don't feel this kind of enthusiasm, we assume we haven't met God. Or, if we do meet God but we're left doubting, confused, or worried, then we assume we haven't had an authentic "God-moment." We end up believing that God will always have an exclamation point. Yet we know that's not, necessarily, how God works. God comes to us when we need God. And that experience can feel like a lightning bolt or be so subtle, it could feel like a little wine on our lips and a crumb of bread in our belly. We are called to be aware of the God who is always with us. And since God is always with us, we are also called to bring God's word to all people, whether we're enthusiastic about it or not.

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But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”​

Isaiah 43:1-7

Pastor Marc's sermon for Baptism of Jesus (January 13, 2019) on Isaiah 43:1-7. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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It’s a bit scary to be a newborn...

Because you enter the world exactly as you are. You’re small, defenseless, and a little bit confused because you’re now “outside,” away from that precious inner sanctum where there was warmth and food. A newborn might spend its first few moments being poked and prodded by strangers who are wearing white clothes and shining bright lights in their face. Some newborns enter the world with a cry and a scream while others are completely silent. Every newborn goes through their own unique experience when they enter the world but one thing unites them: they come completely vulnerable. A newborn needs to be taken care of - and that’s, sometimes, a frightening way to live. But newborns, of course, know no other kind of existence. They just...are. And God willing, a community of family, friends, medical professionals, and others commitment themselves to do for this newborn what this newborn can’t do for themselves. A newborn needs a community but that community can be a bit...odd. Many, when meeting a newborn for the first time, can’t help themselves but say “awww.” Some feel an incredible urge to pinch their cheeks while others want to tug at their toes. Still more, without even thinking about it, say frightening things like “they’re so cute - I could just bite them.” Being a newborn isn’t scary only because they need to be taken care of. Being a newborn is scary because so many people in the community around them all seem to come down with what scientists call “cute aggression.”

Cute aggression is pretty common and it’s the catch-all term for when we want to “bite, nibble, squeeze, or smoosh the face of something completely adorable.” Studies show that when people look at photos of tiny and adorable things, we often react with pretty aggressive language. If we suffer from cute aggression, we might find ourselves being flooded by an incredible amount of positive emotions whenever we see a newborn baby or videos of baby otters having fun at the zoo. That feeling of wanting to bite a baby’s thighs doesn’t mean we’re suddenly becoming cannibals. It’s a trick used by our brains to help regulate, release, and moderate those moments when we’re flooded with “positive emotions and caretaking desires.” This experience is pretty much universal and some languages even have specific words to describe it. If it’s cute, a little furry, and a bit helpless, we can go over the top with our feelings of compassion, love, and care. It’s a reaction that, for many of us, is just built into who we are. And that’s okay - because, as we see in our reading from Isaiah today, God sometimes does the exact same thing.

God, in these seven verses, expresses God’s “defining and uncompromising love” for God’s people. Written while a large part of ancient Israel was living in exile, this text affirmed God’s “profound commitment…[a commitment] that persists… and is undisturbed by any circumstance.” God’s words began with a very simple but also very overwhelming command to “do not fear” because God is God - and God’s people will belong to God forever. We can imagine the community who first heard these words being a bit… confused. Because they were living in Babylon, having been forcefully deported by the empire that destroyed Jerusalem and burned God’s Temple. They were far from home and had no idea if they would ever return. So the community was spending a lot of time asking themselves “why?” Why did God let Jerusalem fall? Why did God let their loved ones be hurt, killed, and driven far from home? Why did God, in the face of struggle, fear, doubt, and worry, seem to abandon them to their fate? The community felt, at that very moment, as if they were nothing because everything they held dear - their wealth, their power, their homes, their health, their well-being, and their identity - all of that was basically gone. They weren’t only asking themselves why they were living in exile; they were also wondering who they actually were. They were a community that had lost - and they were now tiny, miserable, and insignificant. Yet it’s to them, to those who are nothing, that God does something that happens no where else in the Bible. God says, forcefully, and explicitly: “I love you.” It isn’t to the mighty or powerful or faithful or perfect that God says these words. Instead, they’re delivered to those who are broken, confused, questioning, and doubting. God declares, vividly, that they have an “intimate and nonnegotiable relationship” with God. God’s promise is that no matter where you are, no matter what you’ve experienced, no matter what you’ve gone through, you are God’s. And God’s love, commitment, and devotion to God’s people will be what defines them. It’s not their doubts, troubles, or circumstances that make them who they are. Their identity is centered in the God who loves and claims them. That love is God’s promise made real and for us who are Christians, that promise is made publically and explicitly in our baptism.

When we pass through the waters and when we hear our name on God’s lips, that’s when we discover exactly who God is for us. In the words of Walter Brueggemann, we read these verses from Isaiah as  “illuminations of baptism, a sacrament of relationship whereby we are inducted into the protective and sure care of God.” This claim of relationship doesn’t eliminate the promise first made to the Jewish people. Rather, the words first written for the Israelites in exile are a reminder that God’s faithfulness towards us doesn’t depend on anything we do. Instead, God comes to us first because we are precious in God’s sight. We are, through God’s promise, brought into God’s beloved family through God’s Son, who was born, lived, and who knew what it meant to be broken. When confronted by the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the lost, God could only do what God always does: and that’s just love. God’s love for us ends up being more than just an affirmation of who we are. God’s love also challenges, changes, and transforms us so that we can take seriously what it means to be God’s beloved. If we are loved, if we are claimed by God, and if we truly believe that we are precious in God’s sight, then we are invited to do more than just live our lives; we are invited to discover what it means to live out our identity as the beloved. God’s cute aggression towards those whom God loves is not the limit of God’s relationship. Rather, God keeps telling us over and over again “I love you” because God knows that love is the one thing that will change us into who God knows we can be. We are, no matter our age, always a newborn. We need care. We need attention. And we need love even though we spend much of our lives pretending like we don’t. Yet in our baptism, in our worship, in our faith, and at Jesus’ table, we are reminded that God will never stop saying, “I love you” because God knows that that promise is what will carry us through.

Amen.

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As a person of below average physical stature, I'm not entirely sure I would appreciate being covered by a multitude of camels. When I'm playing hide and seek, two little kids and two cats jumping on me is about the only amount of covering I can take. Yet in our reading from Isaiah 60:1-6 today, being covered in camels is a good thing. The author of this part of Isaiah was inspired by God's own voice to bring to God's people a divine promise. This promise offered the Jewish people and the people living in Jerusalem a vision of what their future with God would look like. The author's use of the word "you" didn't imagine to be writing to individuals 2500 years later who happened to be reading this book. The "you" here is plural and directed towards the city of Jerusalem. Ever since that city was conquered by David around the year 1000 BCE, the city had experienced a large amount of challenge, prosperity, hardship, and calamity. The city watched David's kingdom split in two and survived when 10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel were lost during an invasion by the Assyrians. Jerusalem survived through God's help and by playing the local political powers against each other. The kings of Judah sent a ridiculous amount of money, gold, and other resources to other political kingdoms as tribute. By this point in the book of Isaiah, the Babylonian exile was already over and the returning community were looking to rebuild the Temple. They were still under control by another nation, the Persians, would who still demand their own kind of tribute. For centuries, Jerusalem sent its resources away on carvans of camels, trying to save themselves from destruction while fueling the lust for powers that others had. But in the future, this would be reversed. All the wealth and abundance of the nations, the best they have, will come to Jerusalem. This is the queen of Sheba story (1 Kings 10:1-13) but on overdrive, pointing to a future where current expectations are replaced by God's great reversal.

On this Epiphany, we are drawn to the verse about gold and frankincense because these are two of the three gifts the magi brought to Jesus. As Christians, we see the great reversal expressed in Isaiah 60 as bearing fruit in the birth, life, and death of Jesus. The magi offered extravagant gifts to an infant who had no army, no sword, and who couldn't walk. Yet they saw who Jesus was, is, and will be. They knew that a relationship with Jesus, rooted in God's love, grace, and faith, would be the one thing no empire could ever take from us. During this life, we will probably never be covered by a multitude of camels. We will wonder why the exploitation by the rich seems to be growing in intensity. The world does not  match the future God has in mind. Yet God has laid out, for each of us, a different way of life that notices who we give our gifts too. And once we see who we give our gifts to, we can embrace a new way of life that lives into the hope when every vulnerable community will know that their light has come. 

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It's the Sunday before Christmas and this week has, for me, been particularly busy. As a pastor, this week is always busy but this year feels a bit different. There has just been "more" of everything this week. There are more distractions and phone calls from sales people. There have been more visits to the hospital and rehabilitation centers. There's been more worry about the world we live in, from concerns about finances to worry about hate crimes impacting our local high schools. This has been a week of just "more." And after a week like this, I don't have the energy to even open up my Bible. But even in these moments, we can discover a bit more about who God is for us. And, based on our reading from Micah 5:2-5a today, our God helps us be resilient.

This text is one you might have heard before but you might not know it's context. Micah lived in ancient Judah (the area around Jerusalem) and was active from 737 to around 697 BCE. This time period was extremely volatile, filled with wars and extreme violence. The Northern Kingdom of ancient Israel was conquered by the Assyrian empire in 722 and its population forcibly relocated to other parts of ancient near east. This action effectively eliminated 10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Assyrians then turned their attention on Judah and Jerusalem. Their armies overran Judah, capturing 36 out of its 42 fortified cities. When it appeared as if all hope was lost, Micah shared this word. Micah said that a future king of Israel would come out of the city of Bethlehem. At the time, this prophecy was a ridiculous one to make. The Assyrians had captured Bethlehem and were laying siege to Jerusalem. Micah's words were more than silly; they seemed an impossible probability.

Yet his words pointed to what it’s like to be with God. Our relationship with God is what makes us resilient. Our trust in the One who is never far from us is how we are able to get through those difficult moments in our lives. The God who inspired Micah to make a ridiculous prophecy in the face of utter destruction is the same God who chose to be even more ridiculous by living a very human life. There is no experience in our lives that Jesus won't go through with us. There is no moment of utter defeat when the God who created the universe won't carry you through. And even though God's promise won't necessarily manifest itself in the ways we expect, the promise of presence, love and hope is a promise that God does not break. We are able to go through the difficult times because God is with us. And the God that gave Micah his words is the same God who is with you right now.

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Have you met our old prophet friend Zephaniah?

There's a chance you haven't because in our three year cycle of readings (aka the lectionary), Zephaniah shows up twice. We know very little about him except that he preached sometime in the last few decades of the seventh century BCE (620s-600s), just a few years before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians. Like other prophets, Zephaniah condemned the people of Judah (especially its leaders) for worshipping false gods and oppressing the poor. Zephaniah specifically named merchants, government officials, and judges as the ones who failed to live as if God truly exists. Zephaniah imagines a "day of the Lord" when God will show up, wreaking havoc on Earth, and righting the wrongs we all commit. This judgment will be universal and will include even those who know God well. At the beginning of chapter 3, those listening to Zephaniah assumed there was no hope for the future. Yet, according to Zephaniah, this is the moment when things will take a radical turn for the better.

Zephaniah 3:14-20, in the words of Professor Jin Han, is Zephaniah's "building on the gleam of hope . . . [and bursting] into [a] song of joy. The world is a total mess, but though the people have failed God, God will pull them through." The people will be pulled through not by their own doing but by God alone. God's own nature will cause a new day to dawn on God's beloved community. God's love, strength, patience, joy and sovereignty will carry God's people into a new reality where even the outcast is welcomed home. And when God's people raised up their voice in thanksgiving, what they will hear is God's own voice singing back to them.

The theme for the 3rd Sunday of Advent is always joy. Today we will light the pink candle (aka the rose colored one) to celebrate, along with Zephaniah, that the Lord is in our midst. As we get near the great vigil of Christmas (aka Christmas Eve) and prepare our voices to sing one million Christmas carols, we remember that Jesus is already with us now. Jesus was born. Jesus grew up. Jesus lived. Jesus died. Jesus was raised. Jesus still lives. We, with the help of Jesus, are already moving into a new reality where God's goodness will prevail. And with the voice of God singing with us, we have the opportunity to live as if that new reality is making a difference in our current lives.

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Have you ever refined gold? I haven't but our passage from Malachi 3:1-4 assumes we have. In the ancient world, there was only one way to extract gold from the rock it was found in. A worker would light a fire and place a crucible (usually a bowl made out of rock that can withstand hot temperatures) over it. Rocks containing pieces of gold would be placed into the crucible and everything would heat up. But the fire couldn't be merely a campfire. The fire would need to be hot. The worker wanted the rocks to melt, allowing the impurities to float to the surface while the gold settled into the bottom. They would do all they could to make the fire heat up until it approached 1,800 degrees. The mixture would melt and the worker would stand there, using a special tool to scoop out anything that floated to the top. Over and over again, the rocks containing the gold would be melted until all the impurities had been removed and melted gold was all that was left. This process created the blocks of gold that would eventually be turned into statues, jewelry and coins. Gold is one of the world's "precious" metals but the process to refine that gold was anything but.

If we were approaching a fire burning at 1800 degrees, we would do our best to stay safe. We would stand a safe distance away, put on the world's best oven mitts, and make sure we knew where the closest air conditioned room was. We might be able to protect ourselves from the full blast of that heat. But workers in the ancient world were not so lucky. Refining gold was a hot and dangerous business. Everyone wanted the gold the workers produced but very few, I think, wanted their actual job. Yet Malachi, when he described the messenger who will announce the coming of God into the world, predicted this messenger would burn like a refiner's fire. And this fire wouldn't come to only those who didn't know God. Rather, the fire would refine all of God's people. Those who believe in God, worship God, and follow God are the ones who will be refined by God. And this refining will not be easy. We will be exposed to a spiritual heat that we cannot protect ourselves from. Unlike the worker standing next to the fire, we will be embraced by the fire itself. And that fire will refine us over and over again, helping us become the people God knows we can be.

When we talk about trying to grow our faith, we rarely talk about a refining fire. We imagine, instead, that a few minor changes in our life will help us become the people we think God wants us to be. Yet there will be moments in our life when the foundations of our world will break. There will be times when our expectations for God will be unmet. There will be moments when we will wonder if the God we grew up with is the God who is with us now. There will be times when we will feel as if we are being melted into something we don't want to be. And it’s at those moments when we see how Jesus is already standing there with us, in the fire. We are precious to Jesus. We are worth God's love. And when we feel as if our world is burning up, he will be beside us, helping us become something brand new.

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When we hear the word apocalypse, we usually think about the end of the world. We imagine massive wars, incredible natural disasters, and an unbelievable amount of destruction and anguish. The apocalypse is good for comic books and action movies but it's not, typically, something we want to live through. One of the ways we anticipate the apocalypse is by asking the question: "what will the end look like?" But that wasn't a question the bible really spent a lot of time talking about. Instead, the communities who wrote, read, and shared these biblical words wanted to know: "what is the meaning of our suffering?" Those who contributed apocalypse stories to the Bible (Daniel, Revelation, and even bits of the gospel according to Mark) were trying to find meaning in "their own struggle and suffering" (Revelation: Interpretation Commentary, page 43). 

Today's reading from the book of Daniel 12:1-3 is an attempt to find meaning. Daniel is the youngest book in the Old Testament section of our scriptures. The book was set in the years after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians (in the aftermath of the year 586 BCE) but it was probably written 400 years after that. Daniel was composed at a time when the Jewish community faced severe persecutions from the ruling authorities. Judaism was outlawed and Torah scrolls were burned. Religious rites were abolished and children were discouraged from gaining the marks that defined them as part of the Jewish community. Rabbis and students were persecuted and killed. The Jewish community, especially the one centered in Jerusalem, tried to make sense of their suffering. The book of Daniel was a response to that suffering and today's text is the beginning of the final scene of Daniel's four visions of the apocalypse. But it's not a vision of the end. It's a vision of a new beginning. 

Daniel's vision of the afterlife is less about details of "what" happens and, instead, is centered in hope. Daniel doesn't try to mask the seriousness of suffering, pain, sadness, and fear. He doesn't say that  what we experience in our life is, somehow, "less real" than it is. Instead, Daniel acknowledges that life can be hard and that following God is not always easy. Our faith requires us to sometimes say "no" to the ways the world try to turn us from God, each other, or call to love the world. There can be a deadly consequence for that "no." But the world doesn't define our value or worth; only God can. And through the Spirit and our relationship with Jesus, we are defined by that connection to the divine. This connection is what gives us a new sense of purpose, love, and hope. This connection is what, today and always, gives us life. 

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To see what God is doing in our reading from 1 Kings 17:8-16, we need to start with geography. God sent a message to the prophet Elijah, telling him to go to the Zarephath, a village in the land of Sidon. Sidon is a small country situated on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, bordering the northern part of Israel. Sidon is not Jewish even though some Jewish people lived there. Sidon was a community that traced it's history to the Phoenicians who famously battled with David and other early leaders of the Israelites. When Elijah received this message, he was sitting in a dried-up wadi to the east of the Jordan River. No rain had fallen in the area for 3 years because God was unhappy with Ahab, the King of Israel. As we will discover later, King Ahab recently married Jezebel, a princess from the land of Sidon Jezebel is not Jewish and when she arrived in Israel, she brought her religion with her. The importation of gods and idols into the royal household was something God wasn't happy about. God brings about a drought and compels Elijah to tell King Ahab what is going on (1 Kings 17:1). Elijah, rightly, fled Israel after making this statement to the King and he kept a low profile, waiting for the next word from God to come. And when that word comes, God told Elijah that a woman in the land of Jezebel would be the one who would take care of him.

We shouldn't separate the miracle in this story from the geography because the geography tells us who God is. God isn't a divine being that only operates in a small geographical area. God, according to 1 Kings, has authority everywhere. This might seem obvious to us but in ancient times, gods were local. Their power was centered in specific places and people. A war between neighboring cities and kingdoms wasn't a battle between secular rulers: it was also a war between gods. A god needed to defend their own turf or be considered beaten and weak. For the people of Sidon, God was a local deity who operated in the land Israel. God's power was limited by geography. But 1 Kings 17 shows Elijah, the widow, Ahab and the people of Sidon that God is the God of everywhere.

Imagine, for a moment, if we lived our lives knowing our God is everywhere. What would it look like to trust Jesus is with us in church, at school and in our homes? How would our lives grow if we truly believed that the God who helped a prophet in Sidon is the same God who will help us even if we're not feeling pretty religious today? What would you do differently today if you knew that wherever you are, Jesus is there?

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How do we visualize goodness, grace and extravagance without using money? Money might have showed up around 5000 years ago and, by the year 700 BCE (BC), some communities were regularly minting their own coins. The Bible is full of early examples of money. Abraham buys land with money in the book of Genesis but when the Bible talks about his wealth, it points to the number of sheep he has. Solomon gives twenty cities in Ancient Israel to the king of Tyre in exchange for the precious material needed to make the holy Temple. Gold is, by this point, measured (in talents) but only a limited number of people had access to it. There's a chance most people in Ancient Israel rarely saw money. The few coins they collected were probably used to pay certain taxes to religious and political authorities. For the common person, money was around but it wasn't an everyday item. It rarely enticed the imagination of the people and wasn't something they were emotionally invested in.

People might not have cared about money but they did care about wealth. And wealth was something they wanted. Wealth, on one level, was about having enough resources to gain a bit of control over their lives. Instead of a living a life that depended on how good the harvest was every year, wealth allowed a person to survive regardless of the harvest. A wealthy person wasn't only someone who had 120 talents of gold in their house. A wealthy person also had sheep, goats, and storehouses filled with grain. A person with abundant and extravagant resources was able to feed themselves and their family year after year. So when Isaiah 25:6-9 tried to describe what living with God would be like, he wrote about a feast of good food that never ends.

Isaiah's feast, of course, is no normal feast. The drink is fantastic, the food is rich, and we are invited to even gnaw on the bones. That might sound a little excessive if we're vegan but that's sort of the point. What God offers to us is a connection to the source of all life and that connection will be over the top. This connection is also designed to feed and sustain us. Faith isn't abstract. Faith feeds, nourishes, and shows us how much God loves us. And this love, no matter where we are in our life, is abundant, over the top, and delicious. In the moments when we feel separated from God and that faith is meant for other people, Isaiah reminds us that God is always for us. And God's love is extravagant, over the top, and will sustain us through all things.

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"I heard...I was afraid...I was naked...I hid..." 

One way to dwell in scripture is to look at what is said and focus on the verbs. Today's passage from Genesis 3:8-15 is a dialogue between God, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. It begins with God walking in the garden near the start of a new day (in the Jewish calendar, new days begin at sundown). The evening breeze is blowing and sound of God's rustling alerts Adam and Eve to God's presence. Adam and Eve how ate from the "Tree of Good and Evil," panic and hide from God. The fruit gave the first two people access to all knowledge: to what is good, evil, and everything in between. This kind of knowledge is more than just having a thought about something. This knowledge is deep, mythical, cosmic, and expansive. It's a knowing rooted in a sense of reality that we cannot fully comprehend. This knowledge gave Adam and Eve access to God's experiences but, unlike God, human beings have no way of making full sense of it. And when Adam and Eve are confronted by God, all they can do is hide. 

"I heard...I was afraid...I was naked...I hid..." Adam's use of verbs show how his perspective has changed. This new experience has reoriented Adam. He has now placed himself at the center of his universe. Instead of seeing himself as part of what God created, Adam can only focus on himself. He blames God for creating Eve and blames Eve for giving him the fruit of the tree. He takes no responsibility for his actions and, in fact, seems even incapable of doing that. Adam becomes so focused on himself that he cannot admit who is he or what has happened. And when confronted by the One who knows Adam better than Adam knows himself, the only thing Adam can do is hide and hope God doesn't see him. 

But God does see him and that changes everything. God, amazingly, doesn't give up on Adam and Eve. Instead, God keeps coming to them, working within their reality to bring them back into God's. We know that Adam and Eve will still be themselves. We know all of us struggle to imagine a universe where we aren't the center of it. We can't change our reality on our own so God, in Jesus Christ, comes to change it for us. It's through Jesus and his relationship with us when our use of verbs change.  When we say we're afraid, Jesus says, "Don't be." When we say we're stripped bare and exposed, Jesus gives us a community to care for us. And when we hide from God, Jesus comes to us in our baptism, in our faith, and at the table to say we are his and will be, forever.  

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