Dear friends,
This morning as I drove into work the sun was shining after what felt like weeks of rain. It was awesome! The air was so clear and fresh that it seemed as if I could see every rock and tree on the mountains. I love the post-storm weather—it’s as if the very particles in the atmosphere are recharged with energy and light. It feels like a brand new day.
It is a brand new day and a brand new year here at St. Andrew’s as we prepare to enter a new season in our ministry. We are equipped with all of the tools and knowledge that came about via the pandemic. Our music and ministry staff is settled in and excited to march ahead. The nominating committee is actively looking for new faces to invite into leadership and there are exciting new ideas beginning to bubble up here and there.
New beginnings aren’t easy to come by. They can’t be manufactured at will and they don’t come by the calendar. The energy and clarity of a new beginning comes only when one is mentally and emotionally ready to venture into something unfamiliar. Now, that might sound a bit scary, especially if one loves the familiar ways and identifies closely with it. But nothing in our work and ministry were intended to last forever. The old gives birth to the new and the new is a tribute to the value of the old. Change isn’t about new fangled techniques just for the sake of doing something different. No, change is more akin to approaching the end of a road only to discover that it had led you to a hidden path that you couldn’t see before; a path full of promise and bright tomorrows.
On Sunday, January 29th we will have our annual Congregational Meeting. It will be full of the familiar—reports on the budget, pastor’s terms of call, etc. But there will be new perspectives brought to the meeting, new ways of seeing things. I look forward to the meeting and the days that will follow, anticipating that the very particles in the atmosphere will be recharged with energy and light. God willing!
In Christ’s Peace,
Pastor Jen