Relationships Part 2

 

People change and forget to tell each other.  Lillian Hellman.

 

I pray yesterday you reached out to someone to reconnect/rekindle a relationship.  I pray there was a holiness that was felt over the thin fiber optic phone lines or internet waves or across the miles.  Or maybe you could meet over the steaming waves of a cup of coffee in person.

 

The reality is that you and I are not static, but dynamic.  We change.  Sometimes we don’t tell each other, because we forgot tell ourselves!  Wait…pause…how have you changed in the last seven months of this year?  Ponder prayerfully that question.  I look back at who I was when I came to interview at this church.  In some ways, the words I’d use to describe and define that the 2014 version of my younger self have stayed the same.  In 2014 and 2022, I love worship and preaching.  Over nine years, I still love my family more than words could ever say.  Over nine years, I remain steadfast and stable in my commitment to the local church as vital and vibrant…perhaps now more than ever given the trauma and turmoil we face. 

 

Other parts of me are shifting and moving in new directions.  The 2014 version of myself was caught in constant striving…if I just work harder, I could make sure our church was successful.  I also was lured by measuring myself by numbers ~ new members ~ budgets.  While those data points can be helpful, I now realize they are not the whole truth.  God is up to something more daring and beautiful than what is captured by more people in the pews or twenties in the offering plate.  I now long to interact with people who move at a savory pace.  I recently heard the phrase, “try softer” and seek to be more open to the truth those words might teach me. 

 

People change…forget to tell others…and we forget to tell ourselves.  The last few years have changed you.  You are not the “you” of five years ago…ten years ago…twenty years ago.  Put another way, you are the not the “you” of two years ago because of the pandemic and political climate and personal encounters that have formed you.  Today, take a moment to tend that divine dance that is unfolding within you in these days.  What unique, new dance steps are you learning?  Where are you growing?  What is the holy moving in new ways five years ago never entered your sacred imagination?  And where is there stability and sameness?  As someone said recently to me, in order to grow we have to let go.  May you and I continue to be like plants in the sacred soil of God’s grace and love here and now.  Alleluia and Amen.