The Pastor's Pen

Greetings,                               

It’s been a long spring, although cooler than normal, here in Southwest Pennsylvania.  How has it been for you?  Other places around the country have had stronger than normal winds and numerous tornadoes.  Others have experienced dryer than normal precipitation.  For some, the rain has produced higher than normal flood waters, while others have simply endured longer than normal snowfall.  How has it been for you?

My dad used to say that “if you just stick around awhile, the weather will change before you know it.”  That was true for northern Colorado as I reflect back on days and nights while a youth.  I’ve heard the same thing from one or two here in Monongahela over the last few years, too.  We used to wish for warmer weather, and now that it’s here, we plead for the cool and cold again.

The two points to ponder this month: “what’s normal?” and “what’s changing?”  Change is normal, and what is normally changing is just about everything.   With the changing of the seasons &  the start of summer this month comes the normal heat and its consequences, good and bad. Most people  are limited when it comes to having much control over a change that they think is needed.  I suppose we’re going to be hearing a lot about change in the next few months with the political climate now upon us.

Here in southwestern Pennsylvania in 2008, God has granted us opportunities to change and to remain normal.  We can choose to do the same things the same way, or to change everything all the time just because that might be normal for us.  It took a long time this spring for my tomato plants to decide to really grow and to begin to produce on the vine.  But the forces at work on them have ultimately overcome their resistance to change and adjustments to their trellises have to be made as growth takes place.

Sometimes changing scenery doesn’t really make the changes in your perspective that you might think. Sometimes it’s changing the way we make decisions that contributes to “life and godliness” as the world changes around us.

May God help us both individually and as a community of faith as changes happen in our lives.  Transformation (change) happens – either for the good or the not so good.  It’s nice to serve a God who goes along with us through life’s changes, transforming old “normals” into new renewing realities that will become normal again soon enough.  In the midst of life’s changes,  remember to “share one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ” so that transformation comes about in due season in the midst of changes all around and within us.

James 1:17 refreshes us with the hope that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” [NIV]  Let us be growing in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through whatever changes or normal conditions are currently  influencing the way we live this summer together.

Pastor Gerald