Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a special podcast series simply entitled,

Be Not Afraid, God's Word in Uncertain Times.

And we'll try to post something every day, usually reflecting on the scriptures,

so that we can listen in on what God is trying to say to us in these days.

Perhaps like you today on this first day of April, my mind is both leaping forward to next week

and this most unusual holy week that we're all going to enter into,

as well as leaping backwards to Ash Wednesday,

when life was an awful lot simple, wasn't it?

Holy cow. So I found myself thinking back to how it is that I entered into Lent.

And personally, anyway, I started the season of Lent by just focusing in on the question,

why does Lent exist? And this isn't supposed to be some sort of definitive answer to that question, but it is what's been helpful for me to reflect on personally for this Lent

anyway. And I answered that question by saying Lent exists, at least it exists for me this

year, to accelerate the process of recreation, of helping me to become the man that

God made me to be and that I desire to be. Because I'm sure like many or most or all of you,

deep down, I'm just frustrated many days that I'm not better that I am.

And I long to be evermore, both who God made me to be and who I deep down desire to be.

And then God gave me an image, which was been so helpful for me at the start of this season.

The image was a statue.

It's about a two-foot-tall statue that's here in the church where I live

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