Nurture A Relationship with God at Home
Listen to the Conversation Here — Episode 97 - Release Date 02/22/2025 — and read the transcript below.
Passing on the faith at home means taking on an “upside-down” way of life that embraces service, prayer, and ongoing relationship with God. This conversation shares practical ways to do all three at home.
This weekly Bible Study is a companion to our bedtime prayer services for families. This conversation discusses the Bible Readings for the week of 02/23. Find the readings here.
Key moments in our conversation include:
00:50 Family-Friendly Faith Practices
04:07 Service and Justice with Children
07:20 Sermon on the Mount -- the Pursuit of Happiness
11:20 Jesus and Judiasm -- the Law and our Relationship with God
16:15 Reconciliation and Forgiveness in the Context of Systemic Sin
23:33 Selection of Matthias the Apostle
In this episode, we are joined by the Rev. Dr. Ted Cole. Natalie met Ted when he became the minister at her local Episcopal Parish, St. John's Jamaica Plain. Natalie, James, and Ted were part of Praxis - an intentional community for faith leaders. Ted is an Episcopal priest, husband, and father of two boys. He has extensive experience as a family and youth minister in his 20 year career as a priest. He is trained in dream work as a spiritual practice and provides training for forming church dream groups. He holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from Boston University, with a focus on mystical experiences in cross-cultural perspective.
Things we talked about in this episode:
Praying the Examen with Kids (Loyola)**
The Beatitudes in the CEB
You can listen to our first two conversations with the Rev. Dr. Ted Cole, here (02/08) and here (02/15).
Stay connected to Ted+ on his church website: www.stjohns-jp.org. You can listen to his recorded sermons and services here: www.youtube.com/@stjohns-jp
00:00:00 Natalie Thomas
Hello and welcome to Bedtime Chapel's weekly scripture study episode. I'm Natalie Thomas.
00:00:05 James Thomas
And I'm James Thomas. We are deacons in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
00:00:10 Natalie Thomas
And Bedtime Chapel grew out of our shared desire to support families like ours who are trying to know, love and follow Jesus in a post Christian world.
00:00:19 James Thomas
We offer a nightly prayer service that includes a short gospel reading. In this episode, we will be covering the readings for the final week of Epiphany.
00:00:28 Natalie Thomas
And we are here today for the third week with the Reverend Dr. Ted Cole, who we know from our shared ministry in Massachusetts. And Ted has been with us the past two weeks. We highly recommend the first two conversations we had with him to you. And if you want to get a little bit get to know him and a little bit about his ministry, you can listen to those two episodes today.
00:00:50 Natalie Thomas
Ted, we're going to ask you to introduce yourself through a different question, which is about practical tips for families who are looking to integrate prayer into their lives. And in our last conversation you talked a little bit about the examine and ways you're using that. You also referenced briefly the importance of service and acts of service as a family, which I know is something that James and I want to do more than we actually do with our kids.
00:01:17 Natalie Thomas
And so if you could share, you know, in general what you've seen in your ministry as a priest for families to integrate faith into their home lives and if you do have any examples of how families have integrated service into their lives, those would be a blessing to us and I imagine others as well.
00:01:34 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Thank you, James and Natalie for this invitation and it's been marvelous sharing conversations with you these past couple of weeks. And I would commend to folks the podcast Bedtime Prayers. Excellent resource for engaging your family's and prayer life into your days and your weeks. And yeah, I mentioned the Examen and it's a really simple way to bring an inner reflection to your children's lives and your own lives about where did you experience God the most today?
00:02:07 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And where do you experience God the least? Where was God furthest from you in the day? Where were you closest to God? And to do that on a daily or a weekly basis. And it can be simplified. It can be, you know, what was the best part of your week? What was the hardest part of your week?
00:02:21 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
But, but noting those moments and that they matter, our inner experience matters is a really important thing, I think, for nurturing faith across a lifetime. And that gets to the idea and your podcast nurtures this as well, of a kind of A regular, a ritual gathering and intentional faith conversation and prayer time in your week other than church, something in your home.
00:02:47 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I'm. I'm going to try to contain myself because I know this is just a short intro, but in the early 2000s I in my professional formation just learned tons about what was happening in the decline of the church, which was begun even then, accelerated even now. The mainline Protestant churches influence of Christianity and the culture in general.
00:03:08 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
The Christianity that we have a heart for, conservative Christianity, as we talked about in previous weeks, is a different kettle of fish. And I was taught all kinds of ways that we can weave faith into our daily lives. At St. John's we share every week a resource called Taking Faith Home, which is a tool which has scripture readings, prayers, ideas for service, devotions that you might practice, rituals and traditions that you might weave into your home every week with something for every day.
00:03:41 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And I'm encouraging people in a more active way now to take that home and to weave it into their practice. We make it available on our website so you can check it out at St. John's website. They have all kinds of stuff that the Taking Faith Home has folks, folks develop that have all kinds of stuff to answer this need of how do we make prayer a part of our family's daily weekly life and the idea of service.
00:04:07 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
You know, the ones that are most effective I think are the ones that are regular. So a food pantry where you could volunteer once a month to package food or to deliver food, that's kind of the classic one that comes to mind. This is something that in our family we really need. There was a wonderful event that our deanery held.
00:04:26 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
A big gathering sponsored by Rise Against Hunger was held at Church in the Advent in Beacon Hill where we packaged emergency meals for response. There were a hundred plus people gathered to do this work. And my older boy, this was years ago, he was young then, but my older boy and I, Theo and I went and that's the kind of thing that stays with the kid and that they remember and there needs to be multiple iterations of that.
00:04:53 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
We also try to collect food at St. John's once a month for a local health center and to encourage. And again, this I've been faulting on, but it's aspirational. Encourage the boys to think about, hey, what do we have an abundance of that we can share? You know, in our home, usually it's peanut butter or pasta.
00:05:10 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Things that really are great nutrition, you know, for a family or a person in need to nurture that idea of. There are People in need, and we can help them and we can do it in our homes. And when we're at the grocery store shopping, there's another practical way to get that idea of service and thinking of others woven in into our weekly lives.
00:05:27 Natalie Thomas
Yeah, I will say this is one of my delights as a parent. So there are a lot of lack of delights that I have as a parent, but I am going to share. One delight is that we have a small home. And so we're constantly encouraging the kids to think about cycling stuff, you know, in and out, you know, once we get things, and to have some language for children around abundance, lack of abundance, why certain people have, why certain people do not have.
00:05:58 Natalie Thomas
It's been a gift to see that take hold in Phoebe from a really young age. And sometimes she'll just bring something up to me and she'll say, I'm ready to give this away. Just, you know, And I think I am so delighted that at a young age we can normalize. And also, you know, we do a lot of our shopping at secondhand stores and I buy most of my clothes secondhand for purposes of not feeding the beast of fast fashion and what that does across the world.
00:06:29 Natalie Thomas
And to really also build in some language around, it's better to buy things that already exist and, you know, just to model. And what I'm hoping to iterate here through these comments is not only modeling it, inviting kids into it like you're suggesting, and then giving them language to talk about why we're doing it, to look for what we have in abundance to share can be such a.
00:06:51 Natalie Thomas
Is such an important practice as parents.
00:06:55 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Yeah.
00:06:57 James Thomas
All right, well, let's get into the readings for the week. Ted, you were saying a second ago that it, you know, you have to take these ideas and practices from church and we have to bring them home if we want them to really stick. And that's the idea that we have here, is that a short liturgical service, five minutes a night, with a gospel reading to center the time at the end of the day.
00:07:20 James Thomas
That's the idea, at least. And we find ourselves then in the lectionary calendar at the end of Epiphany, in a bit of a transition from epiphany tide to Lent. And the lectionary takes us over to the Sermon on the Mount. And in the common English Bible, as we were talking about last week, that's the translation we're using, the Beatitudes, which most people will probably know have been translated in.
00:07:45 James Thomas
Well, first in the King James and then in the NRSV as blessed are or blessed be the first word of the Beatitude being blessed in the common English Bible, they are happy, are happy are those. And there's something about that translation happy are that really emphasizes the upside downedness of, you know, all the things in the list and the first couple at least are things that folks are generally not happy about in the Beatitudes.
00:08:16 James Thomas
So how can we be invitational about bringing school age children into the upside down kingdom? How do we talk about the Beatitudes? How have you explained the Beatitudes to young Christians over the years? And what does it mean to be happy, to mourn and all the rest?
00:08:38 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
The Beatitudes for me personally have been a huge. And the Sermon on the Mount as a whole has been one of the most important passages in the Gospels in my own journey. And there's something about having been a child of a hurt home that these things particularly spoke to me. And I realize that's not everyone's experience, though.
00:09:06 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
For those of us who have had pain in our early childhood life, I think there's a special resonance to what the Beatitudes, what Jesus articulates in the Beatitudes, which is that we're not forgotten and that what we experienced, God is going to enter into and bring blessing out of. And the turn to happy is challenging in some ways because of the immediacy of it.
00:09:31 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Blessed, you know, blessed could bear fruit down the road, but happy is now we're happy in these experiences is a really confusing thing to articulate. I know in my own parenting, especially recently, when the idea of fairness comes up a lot in our conversations with our boys, that we need to own that life is not fair in this simplistic way.
00:09:59 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And there's a deeper movement, there's a deeper reality in life where happiness, real happiness, happiness with Jesus, happiness with God lies. And we need to hold that in our hearts and minds to realize it. I think getting ready for Lent ahead of us, right? The language of temptation becomes especially potent if it's paired with this idea that Jesus is telling us life's mysterious and it's harder than we might like, but if we stick with it, if we stick with what Jesus wants us to know about God and about ourselves, we will be happy.
00:10:39 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
To me, the Sermon on the Mount is an invitation into a mystery and into the word we used early on, I think in our first session of Journey, right. An invitation to a journey. It's an adventure and it's going to be difficult, but the end will be happiness. And Even sometimes we'll have moments on the journey where we'll be happy, even in the midst of hard things.
00:11:00 Natalie Thomas
Yeah. And this is what you're saying is very countercultural. Even this idea of being happy, identifying where God is and choosing to believe that God can be present and to be speaking to you in an unhappy moment, as opposed to what I think we're conditioned to today is that the world is supposed to make us happy.
00:11:20 Natalie Thomas
Right. That, you know, we're just. Life is supposed to go our way as opposed to saying, where is God? In this hurt place. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. We're spending most of the week in Matthew 5. And this chapter really digs into Jesus's relationship with, quote, the Law. And both in my own personal faith journey and then my wider relationship with the church, we can see that Christians can easily fall into this trope of assuming or calling the law an outdated legalistic code.
00:11:54 Natalie Thomas
By that, looking down on Judaism, we're curious if you could help listeners who are less familiar with Judaism understand Jesus's relationship with the law and to take that to modern day, how we might help our families understand the relationship between Judaism and Christianity today.
00:12:14 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Thank you so much for that question. And it's one that I am very engaged by and in my own faith journey that has become incredibly important in how I've come to see it and what I'm about to share. He says, I've not come to abolish the law, I've come to fulfill it. I've come to fulfill it.
00:12:34 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That the law has something to offer to humanity that Jesus in his life and ministry is making fully present to us. And the idea, you know, I think we have to remember the narrative a little bit of what how the law comes into being and the story of the Jewish people is there's a couple, Abram and Sarai, to become Abraham and Sarah, who God calls into relationship and who God wants to form a people with who can be a blessing to the world.
00:13:08 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And Abram and Sarai answer that call. They start the. They are the first generation of what will become the great peoples, the Jewish peoples. And those people wind up in Egypt oppressed by a pharaoh who is cruel and doesn't know the kindness and wisdom that the God of the Jewish people can bring to them, which is the wonderful story of Joseph and Pharaoh and Joseph streams, which is Genesis, what, 47 to 49, maybe a little earlier there, one of the great stories in all of world literature, let alone in the Bible.
00:13:43 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And God sends Moses to liberate Those people. And they have to discover anew who God is and what God is going to ask of them, knowing now that it is God who liberates them, who heard them in their oppression and led them into freedom. And so God gives the law to start to make it clear to them who God is and what God is about and how they can be in relationship with this God.
00:14:07 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
So it's much less about legalistically checking all the boxes so that they're on good side, on God's good side. And it's much more about learning what's in God's heart, what does God want to be in our hearts if we're going to be in relationship with God. And Moses got that. And Moses was a person after God's own heart.
00:14:28 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
In the course of the journey of the Jewish people, they start to think more fully how can we weave into our lives and our hearts and what we're doing? God's heart, that's what it's about. And it can become externalized. They can lose, like any of us can lose the purpose, the meaning of something and just think we have to keep the form of it.
00:14:51 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so God continually renews the heart of it with the emergence of people to make manifest what God is about. So the prophets rise up. Samuel and Elijah and Elisha and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the way down the line. And you get to someone like Jeremiah, who lived in the worst times, the most heartbreaking times, the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the conquest of the people by the Babylonian empire, a terrible, cruel nation, and the people taken off into exile.
00:15:26 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And he, in chapter 33 of his book, can tell the people, God's going to keep God's promise to you, and God's going to take your heart of stone and pull it out of you and put a living heart in you. And you'll know God. You won't have to have people tell you remember God, because everyone will know God from their hearts out.
00:15:45 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That's what Jesus is about. He's about that law living in our hearts, making manifest God's love for us and, and through that, transforming our love for one another into being a Godlike love. There's no conflict between the law and Jesus. There is only connection and growth and development. So that it might be a wisdom to teach all the peoples of the world how to be people who are Godlike, compassionate, just, truth telling, loving.
00:16:13 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That's what this is about.
00:16:15 Natalie Thomas
I so resonate with this language of Ra relationship and that the story of God is one who Is God drawing us into relationship with God and embodying that through the life of Jesus as well as the lives of the prophets that you shared about earlier. You know, Matthew 5 speaks specifically about the importance of maintaining right relationship and even so much to hold off on partaking in the celebration of Eucharist if we are out of relationship with a sibling.
00:16:47 Natalie Thomas
Now, this idea of reconciliation and forgiveness is so central to who Jesus is. And it's important as caregivers that we pass that on to our children while understanding the complexity of systemic sin, both, you know, in families and in the world around us. And we often know that people who have been victimized or marginalized are the ones who are encouraged to.
00:17:13 Natalie Thomas
To make it right and to become back into relationship with one another. So I'm curious for you if you could speak to what the Bible teaches us about the importance and challenges of forgiveness, restoration, accountability, as so much as it relates to being in relationship with one another today.
00:17:34 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I think it's helpful to hold a kind of narrative context to this passage and then to think with that in mind about some of the other things that we read in the Gospels and I think across the Bible about forgiveness and restoration and accountability. You know, this, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel is Jesus introducing the depth of what he's calling us to, to us, to the readers, us who are reading the gospel, and then the story to the thousands of people who have heard that there's a new prophet who's arisen like the prophets of old and who want to hear what he has to say, because they believe God is manifesting in him and through him, and they want to draw closer to God.
00:18:18 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so he lays out very powerfully this vision that it's not your offering to God that's most important, it's how you're treating the people in your life. And if you've wronged someone, you need to make it right before you come and worship. That's the more important thing that shows up again in the Gospels.
00:18:36 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Right. And I think that speaks to us. Our relationship with God isn't to take us outside of the world. Right. It's to inform and transform our relationships inside the world. That said, there are for the person who's been wronged or who's been hurt, I think it's so important to remember God is the God of the oppressed and the hurt, to emphasize first and foremost the dignity of those who have been put down and to not expect people who have been hurt to be the ones who are Making the act of forgiveness that has been a perversion that has perpetuated exploitation and abuse of power again and again and again.
00:19:21 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
If anything, the onus is on those who have power to seek forgiveness and to apologize and to seek to make things right. And we can't lose sight of that, especially when we see in our broader culture and our political culture, just unabashed abuse of power being exercised, which just can't go on without consequences raining down on it.
00:19:47 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
It's just inherently unstable and will bring about its own destruction in time. Just pray that the cost and the damage in that abuse of power that gets exercised is minimized. You know, it's occurring to me to share something, and I'm going to kind of trust the intuition. There was a priest when I was at St.
00:20:09 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Mary's in Anchorage, where I served as youth and family minister for six years, that I was there who I disagreed with about a lot of things, theologically and politically, but he had a certain wisdom about relationships. And he shared the wisdom that I trust he got from someone who formed him in his journey.
00:20:28 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That in our isolation from someone else and feeling anger at them for what they did, that the real effect of that is it's like we're drinking poison and we expect it to make the other person sick. And that's a compassionate word for those of us who've suffered wrong. It's seen the depth of the gospel invitation to forgive from within ourselves so that we're not poisoning ourselves with anger that is meant to seek justice or restitution or even revenge.
00:21:04 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Sometimes on a base level, owning that, in my own experience, that can't do that. My anger is not going to do that. Instead, I need to bring to God the hurt that I have felt and allow God's healing power to work in me and through me. And that's very different from the kind of forgiveness that I think is cheap and somewhat popularized of going to someone who's hurt us and expecting reconciliation without them acknowledging the hurt that they've done right.
00:21:36 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
We put an onus, as you name, Natalie, on the person who's been hurt to somehow be the one to take the step towards forgiveness. I think there's actually hurt hidden in that. And reconciliation and forgiveness are not the same thing. Forgiveness can be an internal process that liberates us from the hurt that we've suffered.
00:21:57 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Reconciliation can only happen when the other person recognizes the hurt that they've done and they try to make it right. And in our home, you know, we have two boys and boys. Boys are boys and things will get out of control between them sometimes and we try to get to that place where they can recognize the hurt and then offer reconciliation, the one who did the hurting.
00:22:23 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And that's what can actually change the dynamic and get them back to center and back to being siblings who can enjoy each other's company rather than caught in conflict.
00:22:34 James Thomas
Yeah, I have to say I on my commute, I have a commute of oh, about 35 minutes every day. And I've been listening to Miroslav Volf book called Free of Charge on this topic, which I can't recommend highly enough. It's accessible in its language but profound. I'm actually listening to it for the second time in about 10 days because I had to just revisit it almost immediately.
00:22:59 James Thomas
So I would recommend that to anyone. This sort of he begins with a theology of grace and from there from gift giving and the nature of gift giving to the nature of forgiveness. It's an outstanding read. I believe the book was commissioned by Rowan Williams when he was Archbishop of Canterbury. So it's, you know, it's been very challenging.
00:23:22 James Thomas
Like I said, I finished it and I started it the next morning on the ride back in to really take it in a second time. Well, as we round out our time with you, Ted, on February 24th we celebrate St. Matthias the Apostle, it's keep feast of all apostles in the Episcopal Church lectionary.
00:23:41 James Thomas
We got to be careful when we're talking about the very early church, which they would have just called themselves the way we think. We have to be careful not to be anachronistic and we don't want to imagine Matthias, you know, the other 11 chipped in and got him a red stole from the church supply warehouse or whatever.
00:24:00 James Thomas
But nevertheless, on February 24th we're going to read about the first expansion of the ranks of the apostles and the formalization of Matthias leadership in the ministry. No one can really vouch for everything that's happened in the last 2,000 years. But at least in principle, at least in principle and perhaps, perhaps indeed in practice, we are all three of us ordained in that same unbroken line of the apostles through the laying on of hands.
00:24:28 James Thomas
A couple weeks ago we started together with the transfiguration, this mind blowing revelation of Jesus true identity. And so we'll just leave you with this question, Ted, what does it mean to you to proclaim the identity of Jesus to 2000 years on in that unbroken line of the apostolic church?
00:24:48 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I love this take that you're offering on Matthias and the invitation to Think about him as an example of the community beginning the chain of connection and relationship. That is how we, you, Natalie and me, are having a conversation about Jesus when we live thousands of miles away and are thousands of years in history from when he exercised his ministry.
00:25:17 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
What a lovely way to think about it, because I'm going to take a short sidetrack. I've always been very cynical about Matthias with this take here. We have the apostles gathered, and they're in this time of woundedness now. They know Jesus is risen, but Judas betrayed them and just how hurt they must be.
00:25:40 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so they seek to heal the wound and to have someone take Judas place. And they pray about it. We like that. They lift up two candidates who they discern are worthy of fulfilling the role. We like that. And then they cast dice to figure out between the two who's the one that God's calling.
00:26:00 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And the lot falls on Matthias and he is selected. And in the Book of Acts, we never hear from Matthias again. I just. I can't get past that. Right. They cast lots to try and make this profoundly important spiritual decision. Some things I don't think should be left to chance. Although, of course, in the ancient world, that was not an unusual practice for seeking the guidance of a God or gods.
00:26:25 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
So you get. You're giving me a tool to set that aside.
00:26:28 Natalie Thomas
Set that.
00:26:29 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That. Because he was part of the circle and he had been with them all that time, and they had this impulse that we have to keep this going. We have to keep this going. And they were right about that. And we are here because people of faith for generations before us, heard God's call.
00:26:48 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Had the community discern it? Yes. God is calling you and you're a part of this. And they've passed it on to us. And. And this is so essential for us to live in. And I think we, as Episcopalians are part of the traditions that do that. Because the wisdom of God doesn't end at the New Testament, like so many of our conservative Christians want to assert, God has been unfolding deeper understandings of what it means to be in relationship with God and Jesus ever since.
00:27:16 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
From the desert fathers and mothers, from the early monastic communities, from the medieval theologians, from our Reformation brothers, brothers and sisters, into the present day, people are continually unfolding new and deeper understandings of what we, in this community of followers of Jesus are called to do. And we're a living community. We are a generational experience that's engaging the world and, at our best, transforming it to be more.
00:27:44 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Just, more compassionate. Have More integrity, be more Christ like, at our best and at our worst, we're a mockery of that and manifest the opposite. And that's part of our story of being human. But there's a joy in this and there's a humility in this. There's a certain, I'm trying to find the right word, responsibility for the wrongs that have been done in this, that we're part of this succession of generations that have the privilege of being the present generation who are called to form the next generation, which is what your podcast, in its essence, is all about.
00:28:24 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And I, as an Episcopal priest, feel like I am in the heart of all that. I'm in the midst of all that. And you as deacons in this church, you're in the midst of all that. But the fact is, every single one of us, whether we're ordained or not, we're a part of this community of faithful people, the church across the generations and for the generations to come, that has a sacred privilege of being bearers of the story of Jesus.
00:28:49 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And when we're at our best living out his values and his power and his spirit, so that it might be he is indeed alive again in our midst. What a marvelous thing to be doing together.
00:29:02 James Thomas
I think offline, when we were not recording, I was just saying to you that. And I'll say it all on the air, if you will. Now, I was saying, when you log into this podcasting platform and everything, you can see the platform we use. We'll say, these are where some people have listened.
00:29:20 James Thomas
And you mentioned that, Matthias, to us, thousands of years, thousands of miles. And we do know, we do see that there are those of you out there hearing my voice and Ted's voice and Natalie's voice, who are many thousands of miles from us in a different context. And we see out there it's always a delight to log in and upload a new episode.
00:29:40 James Thomas
And we see you in New Zealand and in Vietnam and in South Africa and in Russia and all across the world and in many places besides. If I. If I didn't call out your country, we'll do that another time. And what an extraordinary thing that is. And Natalie and I have also joked offline that had we known how much work doing a podcast is, is when we started doing the podcast, perhaps we would not have jumped in.
00:30:09 James Thomas
And there's probably something. There's probably something very Christian you could say about not knowing and the value of proceeding forward without the knowledge of what it'll be. And. But what a delight it is for us. And thanks so much for that framing, Ted, because it is. It's exactly what you said. We are the present generation, and our real responsibility, our real responsibility, we do believe, is to form the next generation, because that was done for us.
00:30:37 James Thomas
And I think as you were talking, I cast my mind back to all the people who were instrumental in my own formation, and I could certainly name many of them. And I am right now in my heart naming those who passed it on to me. And our aim here is to. To pass it on to the next generation.
00:30:58 James Thomas
And you know what a gift it is to have these tools to send it across the world every night and see where it comes down. So thank you for the framing and thank you for the time with us over these past couple weeks. It's just been a delight to be with you, Ted, and we're looking forward to seeing you soon and catching up about other things.
00:31:18 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Yes, and I look forward to that, too.
00:31:20 Natalie Thomas
Yeah. Yes. And as always, as James said, thank you to those of you who are out there praying along with us. And we want to stay in touch with you. We want to get to know you and so much as you can in these digital, digital ways. So find us on Facebook and Instagram.
00:31:37 Natalie Thomas
Our handle is Bedtime Chapel. You can email us bedtimechapelmail.com and all of this, as well as the show notes, which reference the books that Ted and James both spoke about, will be on our website, bedtimechapel.com and until next time, we will be praying with you.
