A Note from Pastor Bruce - October 8, 2026
Dear Church Family:
As I write this, I am steadily recovering from a week of Covid. This is not how I planned to spend my birthday.
My sick week has not been fun, but it has not been a total waste of time. My achy and weary body demanded that I catch up on overdue rest. As I began to feel better, I finished an insightful book about the witness of the early church and started another book about discipleship that I have been intending to get to. I did my laundry. I reviewed Advent devotional options. I watched baseball. I had a long conversation with my daughter. I slept some more. Best of all, I was blessed to worship with my Pender family online, to hear powerful testimonies of faith from Greg and Abe, and to see some of you—young and old—lead the service so capably and faithfully. I only wish I could have been there to receive the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood with you.
A wise person once referred to “redeeming the time,” as in resetting and reorienting the brief time we have in this life. If left to our own desires and devices, we humans are, as the old hymn puts it, “prone to wander” or even to squander this precious life, as in living only for ourselves and for things that distract us for a while but fall short of the glory of our creation in the image of God. And sometimes through no fault of our own, like the bug. Never do I feel the wander and the squander more than when I am sick and not able to accomplish the things that usually define my life. As a follower of Jesus, moments like this force me to pause and ask, “Am I spending my time—my life—in a way that glorifies God and expresses Christ’s love to others?” Undoubtedly the most important thing I did this past week was spend much more time alone with God in prayer.
As Christians, we know that our time, like our life, needs redeeming. This past week has also been full of stories about terrorist attacks, a potential plague, AI apocalypse, and contentious political elections, among other things. The world frets about all this, and Christians are tempted to the same. Yet the good news of Jesus that we celebrate in the best and worst of times is the gospel of redemption and reconciliation in Christ, by which we and the whole world are restored to God and to each other in love. For all the world’s troubles, sometimes it takes nothing more than being knocked off our usual routines with the bug to remember what matters most—the true source and end of our life, and the short time entrusted to us to accomplish what matters most—to know and love God and to serve others as Christ has served us. It took Covid to remind me of this.
In retrospect, my Covid week was not a waste of time, but an opportunity to reset my body and soul, to let the Holy Spirit redeem what at first felt like lost time. Because of the grace of God in this time, I have never been so grateful to be sick. Redeem the time, indeed!
God willing, I expect to be back in worship with you again this coming Sunday. And with a fresh sense of what matters most, and how I am to live a life that is not just full, but joyful and faithful in Christ’s service.
How do we say it? God is good, all the time! All the time, God is good!
Pastor Bruce
From the October 8, 2026 edition of This Week at Pender newsletter
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