The destruction of our church that has been going on the past few weeks has really had an impact not only on this building or its activities, but also on my spiritual life.  We are now in what is commonly called the Holy Week, the week that we remember the death of our Lord and the way it transformed everything commonly believed about sin, death, and God’s love for us.  As I look around the church with walls coming down and tiles gone, I am reminded of the battered hearts of those who worked to condemn Christ and the hardened shell that sin can leave us with.  For the several months I have been here, I only knew those rooms as chaos, and not necessarily of the organized type.  Then the process of taking everything away began and with each load gone, a weight lifted off a leadership team concerned with making a deadline so that the construction could begin.  With the rooms emptied and a fairly decent temporary system in place for the functions they once served, it has been exciting to see the teams come in and start the process that so many waited so long to start.  Soon we will start to see new materials come into the building, new walls go up, new things and purposes for the room, and perhaps new people drawn to the excitement of our church family.  The point I am getting at is that it took Jesus’ death to bring new life.  Not only was he raised from the dead, but each of us was given the hope of eternal life with God because of his death.  I am not saying that our church renovation is in any way close to the  amazing gift given so long ago, but its reminded me of the struggle, the process, the questions, and the hope that it must have been then as now.  When we go through difficult times we have the hope of better things to come.  When we look at this building, we have the hope of what is to come.  When we  think of the Last Supper and the crucifixion, we have the hope of that Easter celebration.  Right now there are several rooms at Saint James that look empty, useless, and hopeless, but the truth is they hold a lot of promise, as do each of us.  I know a lot of us are excited about seeing the new Saint James revealed, but I hope we are a trillion times more excited to celebrate the gift Jesus gave us each and every day, not just at Easter or in this week.  From that celebration comes the light that we are to be in this world.  Grace to your life, Erika.