Sunday, October 25, 2020
Dear St. Luke Community,
My heartfelt and most sincere appreciation for the continued love you have all shown in your cards, emails, phone calls and backyard visits. My heart is filled with joy and sadness, gratitude and grief and so are yours as you’ve expressed them to me. The heart can carry all kinds of emotion that may seem intellectually contrary, but as anyone who is anyone knows, life is never black and white and often takes a turn we didn’t see coming.
Perhaps Moses knew this better than anyone, when at the end of his life, he was not allowed to enter into the Promised land (Deuteronomy 34:1-12). Sunday after Sunday we’ve followed Moses in the wilderness, witnessing him as a faithful servant of God’s, obeying God (not always perfectly), only to be denied entry for the remaining years of his life. There is nothing fair about it and our heart breaks for Moses as we look to God and ask on behalf of Moses, “Why not?”
In this scripture Moses is the picture of unfulfilled dreams and disappointment. Many of us are feeling that way these days, some of you for personal reasons, and perhaps all of you collectively as a congregation.
But also like Moses, you have seen God intimately and journeyed with God so closely that many of you have expressed versions of coming face to face with God in unexplained and undefinable ways. To be a servant of God’s is often like this – contradictory in nature and as fulfilling as it can be frustrating.
But unlike Moses, you will not be separated from the community that you’ve traveled with this far. And the promises that God makes to you are fulfilled in Christ, the one we profess as our Lord and Savior. As you continue to journey ahead, my prayer is that you will do so as a body, one body, in Christ. All of God’s promises are already living among you, and they are not just a vision of some unknown future, but living among you in the hear and now, expressed in the ways you carry one another and love one another today and all days.
Yours in Christ,
Nicole