A year-end report is, in some ways, a bit of a misnomer; at the end of a calendar year, we’re usually only a third of the way into our “ministry year”. Yet, ministry isn’t really broken up into periods like a hockey game, or a timer that goes off letting us know that the cake is finished baking in the oven either. But, what a year-end report does is make me sort of push a pause button that gives me a very short time to reflect on the happenings of the past calendar year in a neat little package that, may or may not be read and then can be filed away. So what I’ve found over the years is that December 31 just rolls over to January 1st; to another day in a year that can get old really quick. Another day with the same problems and pain, the same joys and jobs are there when we wake up to a new day that just happens to be in a new year.
Even still, as 2021 ends, the hope is that things will be different, but… As I write this, we’re 4 days in and the news of the day is more restrictions and numbers that are getting worse than they were in 2021. In its infancy, 2022 is already looking just as uncertain as the year before, or really, even the year before that, or the year before that. To say that 2021 was both exhausting, and energizing, as looming lockdowns and the ever-changing situation of Covid was navigated, is an understatement. Yet with the call to rise to these challenges comes the call for innovation and adaptation; and that can certainly deplete our energy. Yet, it can also restores us.
We’ve had some familiar faces leave the fold for various reasons, and it saddens me of course. We’ve also seen some new faces for perhaps those same “various” reasons, and that, of course, brings joy. Some we will see again when the circumstances warrant it for them. But for any variety of reasons, overall I truly believe we’ve been, and continue to be, a welcoming place whether our gathering is online or in person. I can’t say this for sure, but I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb here to say that this congregation has been asked to go through more change over the course of the past 2 years than it has ever been asked to endure before. And so I thank God for all of you and the ways you’ve encouraged myself, and one another.
Some pastors who have been around the block have said that almost any change is initially experienced as loss. And sure, the loss of meeting together at times, is a big one. Losing the coming together in the place we expect to live life together can feel… “life” threatening; for sure it takes some serious adaptation. It sometimes seems like it’s asking a fish to grow legs to live on land, or asking us to grow fins so that we can live in the sea. Whatever the case, absolutely, it’s been hard!
Yet, what makes adapting to changes on the fly possible is that there are things that never change. And one of those things that never change is the God that we believe in and trust our very lives to; we have a God who was, who is, and who will continue to be, faithful. God’s faithfulness will never come to an end and so my prayer for 2022 is that we continue resting in this glorious truth and continue entrusting ourselves to the One who paid with His life to redeem us, rather than being anxious about the ways we will be challenged to adapt wherever it is that we go in 2022.
It’s hard to know exactly what lies before us in this fallen world that is quickly passing away, but we press on; “because Jesus has made us His own… forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, [we] press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:13b-14)
We stand firmly on the Rock that is higher than you and I, the Lord Jesus Christ! This Firm Foundation is one from which we cannot be moved or shaken.
As it was in 2021, still in His gracious, merciful, and glorious grip in 2022, and always,
Pastor Anthony