You know what makes Kingston a place worth living? You guys. You bring value to otherwise meaningless lives… Not worthless lives, but lives that have been deemed unworthy by the privileged, by the media, by the powers that be. Into those lives, you – the community at Next – bring meaning, bring hope, bring direction, bring love & community. You are the GPS by which others find their way to God. You are the light at the end of the tunnel for those suffering from depression or lack of friendship. Your lives and friendships offer a kind of hope to those around you that nothing else in the world can even come close to. When you love those around you, it’s on of the only things that can break through their feelings of being unloved or unlovable and the knowledge of that love can lead to understanding the possibility that our great God (the God of the universe) loves them too, even for folks who would never be able to imagine that before. Wake up and shine the light of Christ into the world. You may feel like the downtrodden, like the rejected, like you don’t have enough – and that may even be true at times – but that can’t stop the effect of your beacon in the darkness. Your acts of kindness are the only gospel some people may ever hear. This is what friends of Jesus look like – this is what a community filled with the Holy Spirit will become. You are such a people, the light of Christ is in you.
(Based on Matthew 5 and Ephesians 5)
