May 2022
Last month many members and friends of the church, alongside our brothers and sisters from PIBH, gathered to do some spring cleaning. Inside, items were organized, cleaned, thrown away, or collected to be sold in the Boro-wide Yard Sale this month (look for details in this issue of the Caller). Outside, the garden beds were weeded, cleaned, and mulched.
The work, both inside and out, showed signs of new life. As leaves were raked away, shoots of flowers appeared. Getting through accumulated clutter allowed us to find items that folks had been looking for for months and years. An old set of risers, which had been gathering dust in the rooms behind the baptistry, were delivered to our friends at First Presbyterian.
We have just celebrated Easter, a time when we give thanks for the new life that God offers us each and every day. Christians are famously an Easter people: not dwelling in the tomb with the wrappings of death, but proclaiming the Good News of Resurrection to the whole world. The challenge for us is to keep this sense of new life fixed in our minds the whole year round.
In a few hours of work, our church was cleaned and straightened up. It is more comfortable now to go into certain rooms, which had been cluttered and dirty. It is more pleasant to stroll around the grounds and enjoy the beautiful plants and flowers. With just a few hours of work, we breathed new life into our home. Where else are we being called to spread that newness, that life?
I challenge each of you this month to take some time–no more than 2 or 3 hours–to start the work of making something new. It can be as simple as writing letters to friends and relatives, volunteering at Open Door (or our Yard sale!) or beginning some passion project that has lain dormant for too long. I plan to build some more raised beds for the garden behind the parsonage. Whatever you choose, I pray that you will be encouraged and vitalized by the new growth that you encounter. For life gives way to more life. By encouraging growth and life in one area, we may unexpectedly encounter it in another.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Jon