Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1-24; Jonah 1:17-2:10; Acts 27:9-26; Luke 9:1-17

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

Jonah: from “the belly of Sheol.” “Where can I flee from your presence?” asks the psalmist. “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there,” he says, answering his own question (Psalm 139:7b,8b). Death itself is no barrier to the God who is determined to know, to claim, to fellowship with … to love. For his part, Jonah has done everything he can to get away from God. Three times, yesterday’s reading notes that Jonah flees “from the presence of God” (Jonah 1:3 [twice], 10). Jonah’s flight carries him down, down, down: “down” to Joppa to find a boat to take him to Tarshish, “down” into the hold of the ship to escape into slumber, and finally down “into” the sea (Jonah 1:3,5,15). 

Right there, as low as he can go, as far away from God as he can seem to get, Jonah comes face to face with the God he can’t escape—right there in the belly of a great fish. Right there in what he calls “the belly of Sheol,” the belly of death. There he learns to bless the God from whom there is no escape. There Jonah learns that God hears from his “holy temple” (Jonah 2:4,7). 

Having hit bottom, Jonah learns to cry out: “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2). The hinge of the entire book of Jonah lies at 2:6: “… I went down… yet you brought me up.” As a result, the fish whose belly should have been the end of Jonah becomes instead the end of an old Jonah and the beginning of a new Jonah. A means of death becomes the means of life. Small wonder Jesus likens Jonah’s three days and three nights to his own: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Small wonder also that generations of Christians have seen a picture of Jonah’s and their baptisms in Jonah’s symbolic death in the belly of the fish and his symbolic resurrection when he is “spewed out upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10).  Saved by a fish. Praise be. 

Acts: hope in the storm. “… we finally gave up all hope of being saved” — Acts 27:20. Emerging from his “baptism,” Jonah still has a lot to learn about the God who has loved him and saved him.  God loves and has saving designs on people who are “other” to Jonah (who nevertheless is still not ready to see God’s mercy extended to the Ninevites). Not so with Paul. Paul rises from his own baptism, scales removed from his eyes, ready to take the good news of Christ as Messiah, Savior, and Lord, to Jew and Greek alike, and see lives changed. As he describes it, Jesus’s call to Paul includes his being sent “to open [Gentiles’] eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). 

As a result, when everybody else on the storm-tossed ship headed for Rome has lost hope (including Paul’s friend and companion in ministry, Luke, who numbers himself among the despairing with his “we finally gave up”) Paul is able to speak hope to the hopeless. He speaks calm in the storm: “I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.” He narrates the appearance of an angel who promises that Paul’s mission will be carried out and that there will be safety for all on the ship. Paul continues, “So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we will have to run aground on some island” (Acts 27:22,25-26). And so it shall be in tomorrow’s reading. 

For today, I pray for you and me a Jonah prayer and a Paul prayer. I pray for us the assurance that in the lowest of our lows—even when it’s a low we have fully brought upon ourselves—the grace of God is already there, ready to hear, ready to lift up. And I pray for you and for me calm in the midst of any storm: fixed purpose, indominable courage, and an irresistible love for the things and the people the Lord loves. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Midday Eucharist

Thank you for joining us for worship! Rev. Canon Josh Bales is leading today. In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer to you praise and thanksgiving.

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; Jonah 1;1-17; Acts 26:24-27:8; Luke 8:40-56

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

We take a three-day journey now with the prophet Jonah. It so happens that this reading overlaps with the reading of those chapters in Acts that recount the apostle Paul’s voyage to Rome. Reading the prophet Jonah’s oceanic misadventures side by side with the apostle Paul’s oceanic adventures makes for intriguing comparisons. Two servants of the Word of God make westward sea journeys: Jonah towards Tarshish (believed to be near modern day Spain), and Paul towards Rome. One flees God’s call to bless the nations. The other pursues God’s call to bless the nations. 

Jonah. According to 2 Kings, the prophet Jonah lives during the zenith of the Northern Kingdom. In 2 Kings 14:25-28, Jonah ministers for at least part of the 41-year reign of Jeroboam II (786–746 B.C.). Scripture judges Jeroboam II spiritually to be one of the worst of Israel’s kings: “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Nonetheless, God used him to expand Israel’s borders both to the north (Lebo Hamath) and to the south (Sea of the Arabah = Dead Sea), and to protect, even “save,” Israel through military victories over the Syrians (14:25,28). 

The message of the book of Jonah is that God is not interested in prospering and protecting his people so they can keep his goodness to themselves. God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12 included the promise that Abram and his family would be a blessing to the nations. Ever since, the Hebrew people have been on mission to take God’s good intentions to the world—even to a hostile world. 

The time of Jonah’s ministry (which also happened to be when Amos and Hosea were inveighing against Israel’s moral decay and religious infidelity) was a time of intense patriotism, smug materialism, and ugly xenophobia in Israel. Augmenting Amos’s and Hosea’s messages, God challenges Israel’s self-absorption and self-protection by reminding her of his love for the surrounding nations. What better way of doing so than by sending a prophet, Jonah, to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, the biggest power—and therefore the greatest political threat to Israel—in the Ancient Near East? 

Jonah understood fully what God was up to, and said, “Nope! Not having it!!” Jonah attempted to travel as far from Nineveh as possible, to Tarshish, at the western end of the Mediterranean.

God will change his heart. The belly of a large fish initiates Jonah’s own “Damascus Road Experience,” the beginning of his lesson about God’s love for all people. 

Acts. It’s quite a different experience to read about the apostle Paul’s resolve to get himself to the capital city of the then-known world’s dominant city—Rome—and there to proclaim God’s “good news” of God’s saving love: “the power of God for salvation” for Jew and Gentile alike (see Romans 1:16-17). 

Before Paul’s journey from the shores of Israel, he has opportunity to share that good news with the great-grandson of the very Herod the Great who had tried to assassinate Baby Jesus (see Matthew 2). In a remarkable scene, set in the (even to this day) gorgeous theatre-by-the-sea at Caesarea-by-the-Sea, Paul gives his final account of his Damascus Road Experience—his call from being persecutor of the faith to becoming apostle of the faith. In his speech, he stresses that it is not so much his own voice that Herod Agrippa is listening to but Jesus’s, the would-be victim of Agrippa’s great-grandfather. This same Jesus is now Christus Victor. Paul insists that what Scripture had said would happen has happened. The Messiah would suffer, “and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he [the Messiah!] would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23, from yesterday’s reading). If I may point out the irony of the situation: Agrippa’s great-grandfather tried to kill Jesus for fear of being supplanted as king. But while Herod the Great is long gone, King Jesus lives. Paul is implying that Jesus is calling Agrippa, through Paul’s voice, to “repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance” (Acts 26:19, again, from yesterday’s reading). 

And though becoming “quickly persuad[ed] … to become a Christian” is indeed offered to this Herod, sadly he demurs (Acts 26:28). That makes Paul only the more determined to go—chains and all (26:29)—to Rome to make the same proclamation of God’s love in Christ the True King, with the same offer of eternal life, at the cost simply of loving obeisance. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

The Very Rev. Dr. Reggie Kidd is leading Noonday Prayer today. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Micah 7:1-7(8-20); Acts 26:1-23; Luke 8:26-39

Adding Sunday’s OT Scripture: Micah 6:1-8

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

The last two chapters of Micah come to a thrilling (if complicated) climax. In Micah 6:1-8 (which would have been yesterday’s reading), the prophet presents Yahweh’s covenant-lawsuit against his unfaithful people: despite his mighty works to bring them out of Egypt, to conduct them through the wilderness, to win battles for them, and to bring them into the Promised Land—despite all the “saving acts of the Lord,” they have not kept covenant with him (Micah 6:1-5). What will restore covenant? Not works of empty religious ritual—no matter how pious looking, no matter how extreme (Micah 6:6-7). 

What will restore the broken relationship is a return to the terms of God’s covenant (Micah 6:8): 

• Do justice. The covenant calls for Israelites to treat one another as well as strangers and foreigners (indeed, creation itself) with fairness and equity. Even rest on the Sabbath day contemplates the well-being of servants and livestock and the land (Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21).

• Love kindness. The term here denotes something quite different from normal English associations with “kindness” (i.e., “being nice”). The Hebrew is ḥeseḏ, perhaps better rendered as “lovingkindness.” What it calls to mind is God’s lovingkindness toward his people, which invites—actually, demands—love in return. While it might feel awkward to translate the phrase, “Love lovingkindness,” that wording brings out its true resonance. Here, Micah is saying, “Yahweh has loved you! Love him back! Worship him and only him. Worship him his way, not yours. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” 

• Walk humbly with your God. The “walking” evokes Psalm 1’s “two paths” of life, one of life, and one of death. To walk the path of life calls for a non-bloated, rather than an over-inflated, sense of self. It calls for a sense of dependence, rather than of independence. A sense of one’s smallness and contingency. It calls for what Paul would refer to as “not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought” (Romans 12:3). 

In the first part of chapter 7, Micah illustrates these points:

• Doing justice means distancing oneself from practices like “lying in wait for blood … hunting one another with nets,” offering bribes and perverting justice (Micah 7:3). 

• Loving “lovingkindness” is all about “looking to the Lord … waiting for the God of my salvation” … expecting that “my God will hear me” (Micah:7). Loving “lovingkindness” is about worship from the heart. 

• The path of humility calls for “bearing the indignation of the Lord” when one has sinned, and then patiently waiting for Yahweh’s vindication (not one’s own!) in the sight of one’s detractors (Micah 7:9). 

Those who “do justice, love lovingkindness, and walk humbly with their God” will indeed experience vindication, release, and peace. And that is what the last half of the last chapter of Micah promises. Micah is given a brief glimpse into the glorious future that God plans for his people and his renewed earth. 

God, who first brought his people out of subjugation in Egypt, will one day expand their borders and cause his people to live “in the midst of a garden land” (Micah 7:11,14). He will bring refugees from all points of the compass—these refugees will come to God’s re-Edenized land after the desolation of God’s final judgment (Micah 7:12-14). 

The God who made promises to Abraham and Jacob will prove faithful and unswervingly loyal (Micah 7:20). He will pardon iniquity and pass over transgression (Micah 7:18). He will delight in showing clemency: “He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot” (Micah 7:19). 

Indeed, in Jesus Christ, Israel’s boundaries have been expanded to incorporate a worldwide “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:15) made up of sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah from every tribe and tongue (that’s the essence of the message of Paul’s letter to the Galatians). New Creation has taken hold in and among all who are “in Christ”: “If anyone is ‘in Christ,’ there is “new creation”! The “old things” have gone away! Behold! New things have begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, translation mine). New creation has taken hold for the very reason that Christ has trodden our sins underfoot and nailed them to his Cross (Colossians 2:13-15). And, to turn once again to the language of Micah, all our sins have thus been finally and utterly cast “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Praise be!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Sunday Worship

Join us as we worship together virtually. The service is celebrated by The Very Reverend Doctor Reggie Kidd and the sermon is delivered by The Reverend Canon...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; Micah 3:9–4:5; Acts 24:24–25:12; Luke 8:1-15

Adding Saturday’s OT Scripture: Micah 5:1-4,10-15

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Micah: depth and height. Biblical faith plumbs the deepest depths and scales the highest heights. Nowhere is this gamut more clearly on display than in today’s reading in Micah. Micah thunders that “the mountain of the house” of God will be reduced to a “wooded height.” Then the prophet immediately trumpets the good news that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains” (Micah 3:12–4:1). In other words, the Temple and Jerusalem will be razed, after which it will all be rebuilt and raised to a higher glory than that known under Solomon himself. 

Even as Micah prepares God’s people for the destruction and exile that are inescapable, he points to a day on the far side of that horrible experience when they will see God working wonders among them again. Israel will one day be the source of instruction (torah) and ethics (4:2) and of justice and peace for all the nations (4:3-4). With words that will also appear in Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets, Micah looks to weapons of war being transformed into implements of peace (4:3). He promises a day when anxious measures to secure safety in a dangerous world will yield to extended sabbath rest: “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (4:4). 

Saturday’s reading in Micah furthers the trajectory of hope: at the center of this promise “in days to come” will be “one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from old,” and yet who will be born in Bethlehem, David’s hometown (Micah 5:2-4). Not surprisingly, we Christians have universally seen ourselves to be the direct beneficiaries to these promises, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We are overwhelmingly grateful to find life and justice, and peace and rest in King Jesus, true Son of David. 

Luke: choose wisely. Biblical faith therefore sets forth the most extreme of choices: receive the word of promise and fulfilment with “an honest and good heart,” to find it bearing fruit “a hundred fold … with patient endurance.” Or dismiss that word, or treat it superficially, or let it become throttled by competing words—and lose out, eternally. The King has come, insists Luke’s Gospel: bow the knee, renounce other loyalties, and know everlasting shalom. 

Collect of the Reign of Christ: Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Deacon Rose Sapp-Bax is leading Noonday Prayer. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org/noonday-prayer

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Micah 3:1-8; Acts 24:1-23; Luke 7:36-50 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

Luke. The centerpiece of today’s readings—indeed a centerpiece of Luke’s gospel—is Luke’s account of a “sinful woman” anointing Jesus. The passage is proof positive that Jesus is indeed the “friend of … sinners” people have come to think he is (Luke 7:34). What constitutes her sinfulness is left to our imaginations. Tradition has associated her with Mary Magdalene, but that is only tradition. The woman is unnamed, and so is the nature of her sin. That makes it easier, I think, for each of us to put ourselves in her place—because that’s where each of us belongs. 

What is of note is the courage of her very presence at this table of such very righteous people, the custom-defying physicality of her ministrations, and the utter lack of reserve in her display of emotion. Surely, she has not been invited to this party, but here she is: bathing Jesus’s feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, and anointing them with expensive oil. This is party-crashing at its very best! 

Reading the heart of Simon his host as only the God-Man can (“the Pharisee … said to himself ‘If this man were a prophet…’”), Jesus rebukes him because Simon has failed to provide normal, minimal hospitality to his guest. Jesus then tells the parable of the two debtors whose relative loves match the relative weight of the debts forgiven them (Luke 7:41-43). 

And, reading her heart as only the God-Man can, Jesus says of the uninvited woman, “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:47 NRSV), or “Her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven” (REB). 

Those who have been loved much, love much in return. 

I pray that you and I never lose track of what it cost Love to gain our forgiveness, nor ever outlive our love for the Payer of the debt. 

Micah. Luke’s account puts in relief the anger of Micah the prophet at the political and religious rulers who are supposed to “know justice,” but instead “hate the good and love the evil” — whose unjust practices amount to a metaphorical cannibalism: “who eat the flesh of my people, and flay the skin off them” (Micah 3:1-3). Love of self has displaced any possibility of welcoming God’s love. And so, consequences. Purported prophets only “lead my people astray” (3:5). Seers go blind (3:6). Diviners get “no answer from God” (3:7). There’s only one possible result: “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house (i.e., the Temple) a wooded height” (3:12). 

As the writer to the Hebrews will later put it: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). To rework it slightly: “It is a fearful thing to say ‘No!’ over and over again to a protective God’s overtures of love.” 

In the Book of Acts, the Roman governor Felix shows himself to be too cool a customer to open himself to God’s loving approach. The Felix before whom Paul appears in this passage is a minor “somebody” in the Roman world. He is a freedman of Antonia, the Emperor Claudius’s mother. Felix’s brother, Pallas, is Claudius’s secretary of finance. The Roman historian Tacitus says Felix “occupied the office of a king while having the mind of a slave, saturated with cruelty and lust” (Histories 5.9). Years after his encounter with Paul, Felix will perish at Pompeii during the famous eruption of Vesuvius. What a story his conversion could have made. Today’s passage (and the first four verses of tomorrow’s reading) is the lone recorded account of Felix’s encounter with the grace of God. This would have been one big fat celebrity conversion. But it was not to be. All Felix can think about is how he might possibly extract a bribe (Acts 24:26) from this semi-famous Jewish personage who says he has brought “to my nation alms and offerings” (Acts 24:17).

Like Simon the Pharisee, Felix the governor nonchalantly dismisses God’s kiss of grace. May you and I not do so. Instead, may we return much love with much love. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Midday Eucharist

Thank you for joining us for worship! Rev. Peter Tepper is leading today. In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where th...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145-176; Micah 2:1-13; Acts 23:23-35; Luke 7:18-35

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist (JB) had been looking forward to One more powerful than he baptizing with “the Holy Spirit and fire” — coming to gather the wheat, “but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:16,17). JB had been prophesying a single coming of God with a double effect: blessing and judgment. The kinds of things that are being reported to JB in Herod’s prison are indeed signs of the inauguration of the blessings of the age of the Spirit: the sick are being raised up, and even the dead (Luke 7:1-17). But where’s the fire? Where’s the burning of the chaff? Where’s the reckoning for the likes of Herod who has arrested JB (see Matthew 11:2)? How is JB to reconcile the coming of the good (the healings) with the continuance of the bad (the persistence of evil)?

“The year of the Lord’s favor.” It is to make a dual point that Luke narrates today’s story. The message parallels Luke’s earlier account of Jesus’s reading of Scripture in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). There Jesus had ended the reading of the Isaiah passage with “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19; Isaiah 61:2). He had not included the next phrase in Isaiah, “and the day of the vengeance of our God.” What’s being fulfilled at Jesus’s coming, and in his reading, is the blessing of God’s people. For now, punishment of God’s enemies is being delayed. The Lord has come with the benevolence that the prophets had promised, but not yet with the final reckoning against all that is evil. A new age is arriving, the ushering in of an age of blessing: of “good news for the poor,” of “release to the captives,” of “recovery of sight to the blind,” of “letting the oppressed go free.” But not in totality—because the final settling of accounts and the ultimate meting out of judgment, is still “not yet.”

Thus, in today’s passage, for the sake of JB’s emissaries who are wondering on his behalf where is the combination of the Spirit of blessing and the fire of judgment, Jesus performs another clutch of messianic miracles. Doing so, in Luke 7:22, he points to the way these miracles prove that the Age of the Messiah—the Age of the Spirit—has indeed come: the blind receive their sight (Isaiah 35:5), the lame walk (Isaiah 35:6), the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear (Isaiah 29:18), the dead are raised (Isaiah 26:19), the poor have good news brought to them (Isaiah 61:1). 

But then Jesus says (I paraphrase Luke 7:23), “don’t stumble over the fact that God hasn’t taken Herod out yet, nor freed you from prison, nor wiped—just yet—all evil from the face of the earth.” 

John the Baptist’s task. In this passage, Jesus provides his most extensive commentary on JB’s role in the history of redemption. The OT prophetic point of view had been that a day is approaching—a single day—in which God will come to bless his people and punish his enemies. JB is the last and the greatest of the bearers of this message. The sobriety of JB’s ministry is that his job was to issue a call to repentance, a call for preparation, a call for getting one’s house in order. In the metaphor that Jesus uses, JB’s presence in the wilderness was a “wailing” that amounted to an invitation to weep over sin and unworthiness. Weep, for judgment is coming—that’s his message. 

Invitation to the dance. What is actually happening, though, is that God’s coming is being staged in two parts. First, the Lord comes to bless—to open up an era of hope, of healing, of opportunity. First, he comes to provide redemption and to offer “a place on the team,” so to speak. At this first coming, he is being welcomed by all those who know they need grace to stand in the “day of vengeance of our God.” God’s Messiah is being welcomed by all those who know he has come to bring a forgiveness they desperately need. This first coming of the Lord (announced as the glad invasion of “joy” and “peace on earth” by the angels in Luke 2:10,14) is, in terms of the metaphor Jesus uses in today’s passage, “playing the pipe,” inviting people to dance (Luke 7:32). This Messiah has come “eating and drinking,” befriending “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34-35). 

I pray that the graciousness of the first coming of Jesus is not lost on us. I pray that we respond to his invitation to “join the team”—or, better, as the metaphor suggests: join the dance, grateful that the Dancer-from-Heaven delights in kicking up his heels with “tax collectors and sinners” like us. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+