A Letter from Lindy Dec 15

"This is the one about whom it is written, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' "
 
Pilgrims, 
You have had a great deal of new with my arrival. New Pastor. New Christian Education Director. New Moderator. New Interim Music Director. All in the space of two years! That is a lot of change. Because all the new means that there has been much we have had to let go and let God. As I have been praying for Pilgrim this season, it came to me that we've lived in a perpetual state advent these past two years--expectant waiting for what movement God is going to prompt next. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Neither, it truly just is. 
 
Even if God's movement is a constant in a beloved community's rhythm, it doesn't mean we are hard-wired to receive change with open embrace. I think we more have a tendency to want to stave change off, avoid, resist it. Perhaps this is why the lectionary gifts us each year with the stories of advent because the characters therein have been asked by God to receive incredibly life-altering, sometimes even dangerous, change, so that they might receive a gift from God. And the amazing thing about Elizabeth, John, Mary, and Joseph is that they each said yes-- when we know just how difficult that yes is to live into.
 
But, these characters teach us that when we say yes, the boundaries between heaven and earth give way, one of my Advent co-journeyers observed. She also reminded me that these characters also teach us that such thin places never open solely for one's personal illumination or individual transformation--that's not what kin-dom life is about. If such an encounter is gifted, it is so that we can bring something back across the border into this realm: a word, a gift, a call, a child for the whole of God's people.
 

I pray this is what we are watching and waiting expectantly for.

Pastor Lindy