So I hope you will have enough faith in the future – in the excitement of calling and working with a new settled pastor, in the satisfying work of making the goals of the strategic plan a reality, in exploring the new ways you might be called to be the church, and most of all, in God’s ongoing care for Christ’s church – to commit your time, your talent and yes, your treasure, to ensuring that this is a vital UCC congregation for years to come.
It can be quite interesting to imagine oneself into a biblical story. Choosing a role and placing ourselves into the scene can open up aspects of the story we might not have seen before. So I invite you to hear the story of the blind man and Jesus and to imagine that you are hearing it fresh, as if it just happened.
It is good for us to seek out sacred places, places where God seems quite close, since our world often seems increasingly frenetic and complex.
Life and prosperity or death and adversity? This was the question God set before the People of Israel as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. This is the question God sets before us as we prepare to enter a very uncertain future the entire planet. And it is clear what God hopes our answer will be: Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.
What is the truth about where we have been placed, and why? What is going on in our community, our nation, our world, that is contrary to God’s desire for compassion, for justice, for peace— that denies the truth that we are indelibly and unspeakably one— and how are we called to respond? What task has our name on it?
“…we are living in a time when individualism is more valued than community, and spirituality has become increasingly private.”