For many of us we read how the nation of Israel turn their backs on God time and time again but while they were in the wilderness before they entered the promised land and even upon entering the Promised Land they continued to sin and do those things which God told them not to I miscarried on for years and years and you and I read those stories and we wonder how is it possible that you could experience God's miraculous power firsthand the way the Israelites did and continue to turn their backs and continue to miss the mark and we see this again in the New Testament as those that traveled with Jesus and those that sat with Jesus and listen to Jesus and learn from Jesus I would abandon him would question him would doubt him and we think out loud and we dare say that if it were us we would never do those things if we were Peter we would never deny the Lord 3 times before the rooster crowed if we were at the foot of Mount Sinai serving as the high priest we would never create a golden calf for the Israelites to worship as the god that brought them out of Israel Egypt we would never do those things and yet here we are you and I more than a third of the way through the year following one of tumultuous years in modern history we are 8 months into 2021 having survived 2020 and we're making the same mistakes we're doing some of the same things we aren't leading in love we aren't demonstrating radical empathy in generosity and compassion we aren't concerned with our fellow man though our actions indicate we acknowledge the need for community. It is one of the great ironies that all of the outrage last year was about needing to be connected and needing together and we are so desperate to be around one another that we have abandoned all precautions and now we find ourselves in the middle of a variant that is more dangerous than the original strain of covid and our response to this variant is to be more obstinate than we were with the original strain. We don't we don't want our children to have to wear masks in school we tell people if they are feeling unsafe being in public they should stay home we are threatening any elected official that talks about implementing any of the measures that helped us through last year all in the name of community and togetherness and unity and yet we still don't value those who are different from us we still have a hard time embracing someone who has a different political ideology or a different religious system of beliefs or a different culture or a different ethnicity we need to be together and yet we still haven't found a way to live together in a friendly way that celebrate each other's differences we continue to miss the mark season after season just like Israel because in here comes the real shocker I know we are human just like the Israelites were human and so what do we do how do we move forward what is our next move Humanity.