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Shucks. It has been longer than I wanted since I wrote the last Sanitizer. I have every intention of continuing to write them. In my last Sanitizer (I forgive you if you don’t remember) I wrote the alliterative phrase, “Perfectly Positive.”

I felt it necessary to send an uplifting, gladsome message after the previous day’s Sanitizer about the attack on the Capitol building. It was a good and right thing to do. But….

Instead of trying to be clever (“Perfectly Positive”) there was a better word I could and should have used. The word is gospel.

Gospel. The word means good news. In the Greek Bible the word is evangelion – evangel. Evangel means “good tidings,” or “good news.” In my own clumsy translation from the Greek “good message” or “message of good.”

The gospel is not some good news, it is the good news. For God so loved the world. That Bible passage, John 3:16, sums it up.

God is going to take care of our sin. He is going to forgive it. God is not going to let us go. God is going to redeem us. God does not hate us. God loves us. God the king is not going to make us good subjects, he is going to adopt us as children. God is not going to let us die, he is going to keep us around forever.

That is what we need to hear when times are rough. That is what we need to hear at all times. The gospel is good news for all times, every second of our lives.

God sent us Jesus and he has made us his forever. What is more we say he is our only comfort in life and in death. He is faithful.

As we face life’s challenges, we face them with Jesus. And when we rejoice in the goodness of life, we rejoice with Jesus.

Perfectly positive? No, gospel filled and empowered.

Please join me in prayer. “’For God so loved the world.’ You gave us those words. They belong to us. In Jesus we belong to you. We can rest confident and assured because of your gospel to us. Thank you, God. We love you.”