Alex Jeffrey Pretti, RN: “profound, daring hope for tomorrow.”
So much has happened the last few days- Here are words I’ve found challenging & comforting.
by Matt Moberg, Chaplain with the Minnesota Timberwolves
January 7, 2026
If you’re a church posting prayers for peace and unity today while my city bleeds in the street,
miss me with that softness you only wear when it costs you nothing.
Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness.
Don’t call silence “peacemaking.”
Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up.
Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me next to my car,
looked me in the eye and told me, “We’ll be seeing you soon.”
Not metaphor.
Not hyperbole.
A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck.
Peace isn’t what you ask for
when the boot is already on someone’s neck.
Peace is what the powerful ask for
when they don’t want to be interrupted.
Unity isn’t neutral.
Unity that refuses to name violence is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.
Stop using scripture like chloroform.
Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”
Stop pretending Jesus was crucified because he preached good vibes and personal growth.
You don’t get to quote scripture like a lullaby while injustice stays wide awake.
You don’t get to ask God to “heal the land” if you won’t even look at the wound.
There is a kind of peace that only exists because it refuses to tell the truth.
That peace is a lie.
And lies don’t grow anything worth saving.
The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep things calm.
They were written to set things right.
And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it.
If that makes you uncomfortable—good.
Growth always is.
For Alex Jeffrey Pretti (Murdered by I.C.E January 24, 2026)
by Amanda Gorman
We wake with no words, just woe & wound. Our own country shooting us in the backs is not just brutality; it’s jarring betrayal; not enforcement, but execution. A message: Love your people & you will die. Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within. Fear not those without papers, but those without conscience. Know that to care intensively, united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today & a profound, daring hope for tomorrow. We can feel we have nothing to give & still belove this world waiting, trembling to change. If we cannot find words, may we find the will; if we ever lose hope, may we never lose our humanity. The only undying thing is mercy, the courage to open ourselves like doors, hug our neighbor & save one more bright, impossible life.
Alex Pretti, RN
Abolish ICE (Deut. 27: 19, Mark 12:31, Romans 13:10)
“There's a book at the end of the Christian New Testament that has been a pesky little nuisance to the church from the beginning. Revelation is a book many of us try our best to ignore. Many of us had its message distorted by the likes of the Left Behind books (I read the entire series as a teenager). Others just find it too confusing or its imagery too violent. But I'll give a little quick and dirty interpretation for the living of this hour:
The crux of the book's message is this: There is the way of the empire (symbolized by the beast, referred to as Babylon, but really pointing to Rome), and there is the way of Jesus (symbolized by the slain lamb).
Out of the kaleidoscopic, mythopoetic drama that often reads like a fever dream with thick symbolism that seems nearly impossible to cut through, the basic question of the text of Revelation is this: *Which will you serve, the violence of empire or the slain lamb?*
Many scholars have understood the book to have been written amid Christian persecution within the Roman Empire. But others have argued that the book was written to a church that had grown *too comfortable* within the Empire's reign.
Take a look at chapter 3 and the message to the churches, like, “I know your works; you have a name of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death..." Or, "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
I know many of us have heard these words spiritualized and individualized for us, as most churches comfortable with the power of empire are accustomed to doing with scripture. But the entirety of the New Testament was written under the shadow of empire, in the aftermath of Jesus's state execution. If we read these words in comfortable spaces, from centers of power, or with an individualistic spiritual orientation, we miss the point of the words entirely.
Not just the New Testament, but nearly the whole of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, was written down in the midst of Babylonian exile, the home land and temple destroyed and their ways of life as the people of God upended, or just after their return to the land post-exile to rebuild life from the ruins in a land many of the had never known.
The entire biblical witness was lived and written and read in its earliest years by those whose world was always coming to an end. Not necessarily one cataclysmic end, but many types of ending: the end of life in their home land for those taken into exile, the end of worship in the Temple as it lay in ruins, the end of the earliest disciples’ life with Jesus enfleshed in their midst as he hung from a cross, the end of the lives of many martyrs as they faced the death-dealing nature of empire.
Maybe this is the time to pull out the weird old book and read it alongside an able guide (plenty of accessible commentaries to recommend).
There is a choice for churches to make in this hour, and it's the choice churches have been forced to make since the Jesus movement began. Empire or Jesus. Beast or slain lamb. Violence or peace-rooted-in-justice. The power of the strong or the strength of the weak.
John dramatized that choice with the images of dragons and harlots and horsemen and lions and lambs. Our choice is being dramatized by the images being lived among us right now in Minnesota which are out there for you all to see.
Make your choice.”
-Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders
As Any Had Need...
When I turned sixteen, my brother had just turned eighteen. My parents decided to throw us a joint birthday party- a surprise for me. We had a movie playing in the backyard, lots of snacks and cake. The way my friends ‘kidnapped’ me, blindfolded me until we were in my backyard. It’s a day I’ll always remember.
When I was in seminary, I caught the running bug. Richmond, VA is the perfect place for races & I was able to participate in most of them. In November of 2015, I ran my first (& only) half-marathon. To prepare, I was getting up every Saturday for my long runs that began at 7AM. There was a lot of strength training and chafing. The finish line was ahead of me and the course started a downhill slope. That’s when you know you’re almost done. Tears are in my eyes as I cross the finish line- slow as a turtle, but an accomplishment, nonetheless. I had just run 13.1 miles without stopping. It’s a day I’ll always remember.
I had graduated from seminary and was packing to move back to South Carolina when my Grandaddy got sick. He was in Charlottesville right off Park Street- it was 57 minutes from my door to his. I was finishing my last day of work - packing up my office. The plan was to drive straight to Charlottesville since Grandaddy had been placed in a hospice house a few days before. Right before I left, I got the call that he had died. While I’m so sad I wasn’t there, he was surrounded by some of his closest friends & I think that’s a pretty good way to go. He died on a Friday. We buried him on a Monday. It’s a day I’ll always remember.
November 1 will be a day many of us will always remember. The government has been shut down for almost a month & SNAP benefits will not hit the recipients’ accounts at the beginning of the month. Many will depend solely on food banks & community assistance.
A few weeks ago, the scripture I preached on was from Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds[a] to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home[b] and ate their food with glad and generous[c] hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2: 44-47 [NRSVUE]).
This is happening immediately following the Pentecost experience. Everyone in the community came together - ensuring that everyone had what they needed. They spent time together, they ate together, they shared life together. Acts is known as a peek into the early church. In my opinion, this was it.
In the days ahead, the Church has an opportunity to stand in the gap for so many in our community. While help & support will look like many different things, we must prioritize our hungry friends. As EBF discerns what our support will look like, I encourage you to look at these local resources: