He’s Always With Us

Dear Friends,

After a week of sojourning, I’m grateful to be back among you – both in the office and in worship this coming Sunday to sit under Rev. Bruce Mawhinney’s teaching (and how awesome was Rev. Debbie Evanovich this past Sunday!)

The main reason I was away was to complete my 2-year program in Spiritual Formation and Direction out in Southern California – the invitation that came from a God-encounter on the Island of Iona (Scotland) while on my sabbatical in 2023.  You’ve heard that story before.

To complete our program, we spent three days at the Serra Retreat Center, a Franciscan Retreat Center in Malibu, CA that hosts retreats, conferences and various meetings.  Our concluding worship gathering featured some incredibly powerful words of affirmation by our colleagues and faculty, the laying on of hands in prayer and communion – with bread that had a backstory for another time.

For all the amazing blessings of that time and the program overall, not to mention what God has been doing in me these past years, there was one thing that escaped my notice until I was on my way home, driving down Pacific Coast Highway away from the center.  For most of the drive up to the Center, I had looked to my left and seen the beautiful Pacific Ocean – only interrupted every once in awhile by a home or restaurant.  I didn’t think too much of it.  But it had been over twenty years since I had last driven that stretch of road, and I didn’t remember what was missing.  On my way back down, I paid a little more attention… to the empty space, the concrete pylons… that once had held homes and thriving businesses.  The empty space was only there because of the massive Palisades Fire that swept through earlier this year, destroying so much of what had been there.

I knew the fires had wreaked havoc but I didn’t realize the extend.

One colleague had remarked the night before, as we watched the sunset over the Pacific, that with all that the fires had destroyed, the ultimate beauty and majesty of that ocean – still remained.

How much of our lives are like that?

We experience pain and loss, devastation that is real… and when the dust settles, in time… we discover that God – the source of all beauty and goodness, is still there, with us.  And the invitation is there to find comfort in God’s strength, in God’s goodness, in God’s beauty – and in due course, to rebuild and restore what has been lost and to bless those around us with the beauty and goodness and love of God.

I see so much of that going on in and through our church right now.  And I’m grateful to God and to you!

Welcoming You to Grow in Jesus, one rebirth at a time,

Pastor Don