Hello my friends!
First, let me just say how much I miss seeing all your faces! I know that all of us are growing weary of this, to say the least. We’ve all been doing our best to stay active or busy or creative while feeling caged in and isolated. And any of the allure for this as a season of rest has vanished. All of us are anxious to get back to normal.
My advice to us all? We have to take it a day at a time. Today, get up, make your bed, get dressed, prepare breakfast, schedule a quiet time and space for prayer. Be intentional where you can be. Throughout your day, when you feel weary, or anxious, or claustrophobic, re-center your gaze on Jesus. Ask God for the strength to continue on.
Isaiah 40:31 says, “but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
There were several highlights to my week last week:
Seeing Gil and John Petit parked in the church lot, in their cars parked six feet apart, where they were praying together with their windows down and their dogs barking in the back seats.
Receiving a poem from Michelle Doherty about her walk through town as the quarantine had begun was a tender and inspiring reminder to me of our God given opportunity to create and share beauty with others.
And when facebook live failed to work for my Wednesday Deeper Walk class we all went into a Zoom chat where we had the chance to see each other “face to face”. It was tender and powerful. I look forward to doing that again this week and would encourage you to join us.
One of the difficulties of this time has been all the adjustments to technology. One of the things I so enjoyed about our little church was the simplicity of it all. But there are benefits to this as well. For instance, Patty’s mom joined us for our Deeper Walk study from Washington. So fun! I think I’ll try to invite guests to join us in the future. I’m looking forward to that!
As far as our Sunday Services go, our first priority now is to make sure things go off this Sunday without a hitch. Our desire has been to keep things live, but that has proved difficult as all churches are adjusting to this at once. So what we’ve done is record a full service ahead of time to make it available for us all at to watch together at 10 am Sunday morning. We will provide links to the service tomorrow morning on the front page of our website (http://
Just know that my family and I will be watching it with you. (which means I’ll be leading myself in communion…that’s a first). Make sure you have communion elements prepared ahead of time.
Thank you all for your patience in this crazy time of adjustment. Hang in there, my friends!
Grace and peace,
Jeff