08-19-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
August 19, 2025
Though I didn’t get up yesterday as early as I usually do (Monday is my day off), I still had some quiet time by myself in which I prayed for, among other things, our church. The last few weeks, we have experienced some really marvelous happenings—everything from good worship to an ordination to eight new members joining the church to a really fun night of Broadway music of which the proceeds will help underwrite a Christmas Concert. As people all around us are packing up their cars so they can drive their kids to college, many of them dropping them off for their first year, there is a great deal of emotion. Another friend of mine is getting ready for his son to head to boot camp, while another good friend just walked his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Change is all around us! Good and expected modifications to life happen, though it doesn’t mean they arrive without some sadness. And then alongside the expected, there is the unexpected news that brings with it a great deal of hurt and anguish. Again, there are people all around us who are packing up their cars, but in their cases, they are getting ready to drive so they can be present for a funeral or maybe even to start life all over again after a job or a marriage came to an end. The last few weeks, we had some really wonderful things happen in the life of our church, but as wonderful and fun as they might have been, we do these things because it is what the church does. I know of one person who attended the Broadway Dinner event simply as a break from the craziness of life, and for a couple of hours, this person laughed and enjoyed the company of others. You may not think of all the big or small things we do as church as all that impactful, but I do believe that what we do brings some joy and hope and love and peace into a world that deeply yearns for such things. Keep it up!

For the happenings of life, from the highest high to the lowest low and all the other stuff that comes with it, we claim the conviction that you are a part of it all, O Merciful and Amazing God. As the church, your Spirit-inspired body on Earth, we passionately seek to be an enfleshed version of you, walking alongside people wherever they might find themselves in life’s journey. Amen.