Hey everybody and welcome to the Bridgetown Daily for Thursday, March 26th.

I'm John Mark Comer, good morning and welcome and peace to all of you.

I find it very interesting that the COVID-19 shutdown and the shelter in place that we in

Portland are now well into comes to the west during the time period that we call Lent.

Lent is the time in the church calendar when followers of Jesus remember in the language

of Genesis that we are dust and too dust we shall return.

It starts with Ash Wednesday which was several weeks ago when followers of Jesus put the cross

or the symbol of the cross on their forehead in Ash to remember that line that will at some

point be spoken over all of us at our grave ashes to ashes and dust to dust to hold before our

mind the reality that we are mortal we are human we get sick and in the end we all die all of us.

The stats on death are pretty hard to argue with 100%. I may die a century from now due to

my plant-based diet and my running exercise regimen and breakthroughs in science and medicine

and technology or I may die God forbid weeks from now from COVID-19 or anywhere in between by all

sorts of means some painful others not some expected others out of the blue that is reality.

Human beings are mortal we are made from the dust and we die and that reality is sad it really is

and any Christian attempt to spin it or sentimentalize it isn't a front to the sanctity of life.

Paul in the New Testament called death the last enemy to be destroyed. In his theology Jesus is at war

with death and his resurrection was the decisive victory that one day will spread out to all of Jesus

followers and that is what we look forward to on Easter but the reality of death is sad but it's

also liberating and dare I say invigorating. In Lent we remember that we do not need to be afraid

and if we do not need to be afraid of death itself that opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

This has been in historic church history kind of the best moments of the church have been when she

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