The Welcome to the Good Faith Podcast. I'm your host Curtis Chang and the Good Faith Podcast. I'm your host Curtis Chang. And the Good Faith Podcast is a production of

Redeeming Babble. And it's where friends who follow Jesus help each other make sense of the world.

Now, as that repeated mission statement indicates,

we hear a good faith believe there's this intimate connection

between following Jesus and making sense of the world.

And many of our episodes draw the connection from our life of following Jesus

to something out there happening in the world.

We're asking, given that we are Jesus followers, how should we think and

act vis-à-vis some world event. But we also believe that the other direction is

important. How does the world and what's happening in the world

affect and shape our life of following Jesus? In other words, I believe world events out there,

even difficult, sometimes traumatic world events out there even difficult sometimes traumatic world events out there

can actually helpfully prompt our spiritual growth our intimacy with Jesus and in particular I've been thinking about this year because this year

and this sort of season in the world it seems like is often filled with

traumatic events and we're obviously heading right into one in the United States with a presidential election

that frankly many people in the world view with a great deal of trepidation and some fear of trauma.

And so I wanted to ask the question, can this event and other events like

it actually be an opportunity for personal spiritual growth as followers of Jesus.

And to address this question, I'm so glad

that we have our guest today,

the Reverend Summer Joy Gross.

Summer, welcome to the Good Faith Podcast. it is such a privilege to be with you.

...