From the Pulpit: A blessed time of year
Friends in the Community,
Greetings to each and every one of you from God our loving heavenly Father and our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that this article finds all of you well now that we have hit the unofficial end of summer (Labor Day).
I love driving around the communities in which we live in the fall. There are several reasons for this. First, during this time of year, I enjoy seeing students heading toward school and parents heading for work. Second, I enjoy seeing some of the beautiful sunsets that come during the month of September. As the temperatures get a little cooler in the evening, there are some colors that return to the air. Along with these, I like seeing the growth that is taking place around us. When I come to work, it seems like there are new houses added almost daily. It is amazing to me that so many new homes have appeared in the short time that I have lived and served here. It is awesome!
As I enjoy these sights, I also enjoy this time of year because many of us are going to celebrate Rally Sunday or what has come to be known as Return to Church Sunday. We know that many people in our congregations have taken a little time off from our regular congregational programming during the summer months because they have been enjoying and worshipping God in other ways. This month, we get to come back from those other activities and enjoy God in worship and other congregational programming once again.
As we return to worship and other activities in our families of faith, we get to be reunited with the people that we worship with on a regular basis. We may not have seen some of these people for a number of weeks. When September comes, we get to be with these people again. Along with getting to see some of the people we have not seen during the summer, we also get to return to our church routine once again. This may mean that our schedules change to allow time for worship and educational opportunities in the church. For some of us, this means that the alarm clock that has not been set for Sunday mornings will get set once again, so we can return to our favorite seats in our favorite worship spaces.
When we return to church, we are encouraged to invite other people to come with us. Some of the people we are called to invite are the people that worshipped with us during the last program year, but that we have not seen for a while. The other people we are called to invite are the people we know that do not have a church home in our community yet. We have many great congregations in this area. They are full of life, and you can just see God doing amazing things in and through them. We come into contact with people in need of a church home every day. Our task (from Matthew 28) is to invite these people not only into our congregations but also into living relationship with Jesus Christ. This is an exciting part of this time of year in our churches as well. We are blessed to be able to invite others!
I hope you share some of this excitement during this time of year. My prayer is that you can enjoy the sights and sounds of what God is doing among us. I also pray that you find a way to either return to church or find a church home where you can nurture your faith and build a relationship with Jesus and all of God’s people.
Just a thought…
