GREETINGS TO GOD’S IMAGE BEARERS,
It was such a delight to have Bishop Current with us last Sunday. There is a joy that exudes from her that is from the Holy Spirit. Thank you all for the warm welcome you gave her. Hold her and our church in your prayers as Bishop Current serves on our behalf connecting us to other churches within the synod as well as the larger church. And if you feel called to serve in synod leadership, please let me know and I will make necessary connections. I will also let you know what positions the synod nominating committee is seeking.
I am grateful for the image of threshold places that Bishop Current offered to us with the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. It lingers for Carolyn Laxson as you will read in her article reflecting on her epiphany word, RITUAL and for me too as I think about the Transfiguration of Our Lord for this Sunday.
Not only are doorways places of threshold, places of movement where we are nurtured with the promises of our baptism and the food of Jesus’ table so that we are energized to go out into the world but so are mountain tops. Mountain tops and those mountain top like experiences are moments of transfiguration, where we get a glimpse of God that we may not fully understand immediately but yet touch us and leave us speechless or stammering for something to do.
We may long to stay in those mountain top moments, like Peter desired but these places are places of movement. Places to go to and from. They are threshold places that help us to move as we get a little glimpse of what God is up to. God pulls back the veil and we can see a bit more.
Jon Bengtson shared at adult forum a mountain top experience from his time attending a national youth gathering and the impression it left. Amy Frank attended the Extravaganza which is an event that prepares youth directors for the national youth gathering in July. She brought to our attention that due to the covid cancellations, this will be the first time that there are no youth that have attended the gathering before. It is a brand-new event for all, except our adult leaders. So for those of you who have attended a national youth gathering, please share about your experience and your hopes for our gathered youth. We hope and pray for our youth to have a mountain top experience at our youth gathering this summer and at that place away, Ewalu near Strawberry Point for summer camp, including Confirmation Camp.
In this coming week we will be experiencing a couple of threshold events with the Transfiguration of Our Lord and Ash Wednesday. We will give God glory and praise and then tuck away our alleluias, fasting from them as we move to the valley of Ash Wednesday, reminding ourselves that we dust and to dust we shall return. These are threshold places. Places we visit for a time and then move through. We don’t build a dwelling here but move through bidding farewell to the season of Epiphany and into the season of Lent. We move from God being revealed to us and to where God’s revelation takes us.
Approach these mountain top and valley times with a keen ear for the whisperings of the Holy Spirit that just might tell us to listen to Jesus and hearing Jesus say keep quiet until even more has been revealed. Trust Jesus to be with us as we move through these times together.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
