This Week at Trinity, Beamsville
Friday, October 12, 2018
Dear Friends,
This week I’ve been mulling over the words on another church’s sign. I’ve probably done so a little more than I have for those on our own. Thankful as I am for our ongoing Speaker Series (with the next installment this Sunday at 2pm… check out our sign, or the Announcements for more info); and thankful as I am for each week’s street-side message to the community, I admit that it was our Baptist neighbours’ sign that held my attention, too. Apparently they’re getting set to celebrate a congregational anniversary: 230 years, to be precise. That’s a quite a number, quite a story indeed.
Our gathering this Sunday won’t centre on a milestone, per se. I guess the argument could be made that every service, every community gathering is a new milestone of some form, but that won’t be our explicit focus. As much as we honour the blessed story of Trinity, Beamsville and the extraordinary gifts from previous generations, our gaze will be a little more future-focused this Sunday. We’ll be unpacking the language of legacy; of present choices that carry forward and make inevitable impact on future realities. We’ll be inviting conversation about (inter)temporal choices, spiritual choices, community choices – and the sometimes complex ways that they are all linked together.
In the midst of it all, I hope that our hearts are drawn also to prayers of thankfulness for all those who serve and make choices beside us. I know that different folks of different Christian denominations can occasionally (or often) look and sound like we’re from different planets. Our differences sometimes (or often) threaten to overtake our similarities, and that can’t be anything short of confusing, bewildering, or even amusing to those watching from the outside. That’s a message for another day, or a lifetime project beyond my years. But for this present moment, this present Sunday, I pray that, in the midst of our contemplation of faithful choices; in the midst of our balancing the possible future story with our past and present chapters, might we also seek a way to lift up community partners? Could we open ourselves a little more to see and celebrate the possibility that ‘the church’, or even the local churches in all of our diversity, is and are pursuing the same goodness for all God’s people?
I leave that for your own mulling. I look forward to your varied responses. I cherish the truth that we live in a place where we can have these crucial conversations. And I cherish this congregation’s daily choice to name all God’s people as beloved.
With love,
Heather
”When it’s all been said and done, there is just one thing that matters...”
(Robin Mark)