A Letter to Tomorrow, our future  

Dear Friends who will live in the future of St. John's,

You may be my grandchildren when you read this; you may never  have heard of my name. Yet we are related today - even though we have not met. Some day all this, and much more, will be yours. 

I hand over to you the pursuit of a wonderful and divine dream.   You will need many tools to create a place, a society and community, that will ensure the right to a full life, honest liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone around you - not just  the privileged few.

You will need Faith - in a God who is merciful, and who loves all people of creation equally, and who wants good things for them.  You will need the kind of faith  in God that will empower you to attempt the impossible, and to rely on God every step of the way.  You will need faith to break down the walls of prejudice and hatred that infect our lives.   You will need faith to work for the rights of everyone - for equal education, for employment, for justice, for health care throughout our community, our country, and the world.  You will need faith  to provide a loving home for every child; and faith to not abandon the elderly.  You will need faith to build bridges between individuals, and families, and cultural divides where ever they may be found. 

 You will need Hope .  Hope that change is possible.  Hope that will propel you forward when you are tired of trying.  Hope to promote reconciliation and instill the desire to learn - in those  who want to give up, or give in to drugs, to alcohol, or to violence.  You will need hope in continuing to grow and learn.  You will need hope in mastering an even faster changing world  than the one in which I am living right now. 

And you will need Love.  You will need to love and respect yourself; to believe  that you are a child of God, who himself, is Love.  You will need to love the incredibly wondrous image in which you are created.  The love you offer God will grow, and it will return to  you many fold.  You will need to love others - to encourage, support, serve, or lead, guide or give, admonish or ask forgiveness.  You will need to love to heal yourself, and this community,  and our world.  And if you love with faith and hope, you will live an abundant life, know true freedom in liberty, and find deep,  abiding joy.  Paul, the Apostle, in writing to his friends many years ago proclaimed:  "There are, in the end, three things that last:  faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love." 

 As the Prophet Micah wrote 500 years before Paul:  "You have been told, O man, what is right and what the Lord requires of you - only to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with  your God."  Beyond these things, my future friends, I cannot say more.  For I know, if you seek God, you will find him; and when you find him, all else will follow.  Today is the future we hold in  our hands.               

May Almighty God Bless, Instruct, and Empower you.