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We all have times when we thirst. We thirst for understanding; for insight; for justice; for knowing how to get through. We thirst for a better life or a better job or a better family. The kind of thirst we’re going to look at this Sunday is the thirst for truth. Now you might not feel like you have a strong thirst for truth. But we all have a thirst for the truth that teaches us how to navigate the challenges of life and that leaves us feeling satisfied; the kind of truth that when it hits you suddenly know everything is going to be ok. If we are willing,  this is the truth that the Lord will feed us with and satisfy our lounging.

This Sunday evening will be a lay service, led by Warwick Schuurman. The sermon that I’ve picked for him to read is really good. It’s a sermon by the Rev. Frank Rose about how the Lord carefully looks after our memories and sometimes helps us forget. We tend to think of forgetting things as a bad thing but really it’s such a blessing that the Lord lets us forget things. A better understanding of how the Lord works with our memories gives us another window into seeing just how much and how well He cares for us.

If we were to fully comprehend the love of God in a moment, it would be like standing in the sun itself. Its immensity and power would blow us away and consume us. Yet just as the light and warmth of the sun finds its way to our little earth and gives us life, the Lord finds a way to bring His immense love down into our lives. He did, and continues to do this, by showing us His humanity. When we look to God and think of Him as a person, we have an opportunity to connect with that endless, boundless love that is His heart.

When we are proud of ourselves there is nothing that we want more than for other people to know it. When we are ashamed we hide and hope no one notices. But when we hide our evils even from ourselves and the Lord there is no way to be healed of them. The book of Revelation invites us to go through the painful process of exposing our own faults, so that with the Lord we can overcome them.

There are times when the state of things in this world can seem pretty bleak—when things at a national, international, and even local and person level seem pretty bad. Too often it seems like evil and selfishness are winning, despite genuinely good people doing all that they can to try to do what’s right. This Sunday we will reflect on a vision from the book of Revelation that captures this feeling—the vision of souls under the altar crying out to the Lord, “How long, O Lord?”—and we will see what the Lord has to tell us about what to do when it seems like things are really bad and will never get better.

Have you ever found yourself in a bad place and wondered how on earth you got into this mess? Things were once so great! Life was sailing along smoothly and you were proud of how much growth you’d seen in yourself. Yet here you are, back to your crabby, unhappy, selfish self. What went wrong? This pattern is common not just in individuals but in communities and even across history. Luckily, it does not happen by chance. This Sunday we’ll look what Revelation can tell us about this cycle and how we can avoid it.

How do you love someone who is committing evil? What about when that person is your best friend? Is it our place to correct him? Do we distance ourselves from him? Jesus, through His teaching and His example, calls us to remain close with those who do evil (which is frankly all of us), and also to have the courage to stand up for them by opposing what they are doing.

In this series so far we have looked at what the early years of the life of Joshua can show us about the early years of Jesus’ life and we have looked at what the turning point in Joshua’s life when he took over command of the Children of Israel can show us about a similiar turning point in Jesus’ life. This Sunday, in the final part of the series, we will look at what Joshua’s conquest of the land of Canaan can show us about what Jesus was fighting against and fighting for during His three years of active ministry.

Joshua was the military commander of the people of Israel, who led them across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, where he violently claimed the land in the name of Jehovah his God. Jesus was a spiritual leader, who came to the Jordan River to be baptized and begin His ministry of love and repentance. Yet these two stories, so different on the surface, are the same story. This Sunday we will explore what Joshua crossing the Jordan can tell us about Jesus and His ministry.

People have been drawing parallels between the stories of Joshua and Jesus for a long time (which makes sense considering that Jesus is the Greek version of name Joshua). But the teachings of the New Church indicate that the connections between the stories go much deeper than a shared name and some intriguing similarities. Every detail of the story can be read as a way for us to get a deeper understanding of the Lord’s experience while He was on earth. This Sunday we will explore the early stories of Joshua, before he became the leader of the Children of Israel, and what those stories can show us about the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.