Most Saturday nights and a few times a week, a leisurely stroll around the campus of these church grounds acts like a calming sedative before evening sleep is accepted. Especially during these last months, the walks have been needed and relished. Now as much as our recent snow showers have annoyed most of us there’s a special serenity of falling snow on the cemetery and the back grounds that calms the spirit. The snow’s new canvas to the yards will exposes the tracks and trails of the many residents from the neighborhood. All sizes of deer, our resident family of foxes, the variety of neighborhood cats, the fluttering birds at the feeder, the occasional possum, the every-so-often racoon, the very rare rabbit and the ever-present scattering squirrels soon dazzle the snowscape with wonderings about their lives and survival. Before they emerge with their travels, the campus is just downright lovely with the newly fallen snow. But travel they must as life goes on, even for their smallest citizens. And new trails are left in all directions.
There’s a practical correlation of this reflection to our past year. Storms come; what we did before is changed and covered; we emerge and go in new directions. Many times, we felt helpless, powerless, frustrated even angry and sometimes afraid because we didn’t know for ourselves where we would be coming out of this storm. No matter what we read, what we heard or what we were told, the unknown made us dig in our heals and “obstinate” because it was all a new storm. Even if the failing economy didn’t really affect us, hearing about it all the time did. Our loved ones, family and friends, were still getting ill from the “usual causes” and our care patterns ramped around in new ways. Politics, party-isms, denials and falsehoods corrupted what waning trust we had. And we had to find new trails out from the storm.
Our onsite church worship patterns shifted from the comfortable to the cautionary, and what once gave us assurance was contorted to new venues we haven’t yet accepted as final- and they are not.
From Psalm 18, vs 6:
| In my distress I called upon the Lord; |
| to my God I cried for help. |
| From His temple He heard my voice, |
| and my cry to Him reached His ears. |
Look at the year and see how it’s changed us. Yes, what may have been lost . But more so what we are doing in new ways. Doesn’t mean what was before was bad or wrong, just for tomorrow there has to be new, new trails. The remarks from the Vital Congregation Conversations say clearly that the most important things that the current membership attend church for is worship and fellowship. And for this existing congregation this is all good, needed and necessary.
But what about the next? If what we have is serving their needs or catching their Spirits, then why aren’t the new people here? There’s no doing it better or harder- we’ve tried that and the numbers are still shrinking.
We have to look for the new snowfall and watch for the new trails. And if we truly walk with God’s Spirit, and trust in that Spirit to be our inspiration and walk not afraid upon the new snows in different directions then we will witness to the Christ we serve and the Lord we love.
This we can do. God’s watching us in our walk. We can step out together. Find peace and comfort in the new trails. Amen