Dear Friends,

On Sunday, if you were in church, you heard me talk a bit about my experience last week in learning more about Toledo through Leadership Toledo’s Focus 419 program – a three-day deep dive into the history, resources, and future of Toledo and our wider region.

This week, our parish staff took a little field trip across the Maumee River to tour the National Museum of the Great Lakes – an amazing resource, right here in our back yard! These waters that we so often take for granted are an integral part of what has shaped this region we love.

It’s important for all of us to take some time every now and then to shift our perspectives from what we see in our regular, day-to-day lives.

As you make your way through summer – if you have a chance to get away or to take a break from your regular schedule, think about how that shifting perspective impacts your relationship with God. Are there things you can do that can help you to see the world in a broader way? Are there ways that you can see things and people and perspectives that had eluded you before?

One of the things that I believe to be true about God, is that God – in seeing and understanding all things and all people – can best be understood through the efforts we make at broadening our own perspectives. We can never reach the breadth of perspective that God has, but in trying, we can move closer.

Of course, we can do this anytime during the year. We’re not limited to summer, or to vacations. But those can be times for us to intentionally refocus ourselves. When you have such times in your own life – whenever they might be – try to imagine how seeing something new in the world helps you see the world a little more like God sees it. The newness you encounter – the new angles you see – puts you a tiny bit closer to understanding God’s perspective; God, through whom all things are always being made new.

Blessings,
Jon+