Beloved Friends-
Until the beginning of September I will be stepping away from this blog space for a time of sabbath and renewal. During that time, I am offering some of my favorite poems to be solace and strength for our journeys.
I am so very grateful for the companionship we continue to develop in this expanding community of faith. Some of us are connected through face-to-face involvement through Trinity@316, Pop-Up Dinners, Mobile Food Pantry hosting and/or Toledo Streets monthly lunch making. Others are creating connection through our growing digital presence engaging Trinity@Home, participating in our on-line opportunities. And many, I am delighted to say are dipping in and out to all those ways of connecting on a regular basis. Who could have known two years ago that spreading God’s revolutionary love would be happening in all these ways? So, thank you, for offering yourselves and your hearts, your hands and your feet as we live out our Christian vocation as brave, tender, compassionate and humble disciples.
May God bless each of us with silence, rest, play, and the company of those we love in hopes of remembering and renewing our deepest joy.
And may you never forget that you are loved,
Lisa
A Future Not Our Own (by Bishop Ken Untener)
It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kin-dom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water the seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.