It has been a good week in the Blundell household, and a good week in ministry. After a powerful, prayer-filled, exhausting couple days of work with some other pastors around our Conference at the Jesuit Conference Center in Los Altos, I was glad to spend some time gardening, and baking, and being with Mr Dennis. The time away was profound, but it was good to be home. While I was away with these 10 other pastors and our Fearless Leaders, we heard about the ways God is working in communities all around California and Nevada, heard the ways God is inspiring new ministries and re-invigorating existing ones, and prayed with and for each other. It is cathartic, this work...a potent exercise in putting ourselves fully in God's hands, and doing the deep soul-work that relationship with God requires. So a couple of days to rest and breathe and be was also very, very good. And then, I was blessed to do some visiting, to study Scripture for worship tomorrow, to do some planning for the fall, and to look for ways we can better be God's hands and feet to each other and to our neighbors. I was so thankful to attend the PEO fundraiser last night, spending time in a beautiful setting to raise money for scholarships for women and girls, to drive around town with Mr Dennis for no reason at all, to talk with church leaders about the upcoming Chrysalis flight (it's a retreat weekend of laughter and food and storytelling and prayer for teenagers and young adults), and to pray toward all God has in store for us together. It has been a good week, with touches of God everywhere.
In the taste of fresh tomatoes and peppers and peaches and melons, grown in gardens by farmers and home gardeners, whose hands are covered in earth and whose bones are full of the love of their work.In time spent on the grounds of a place whose walls echo with 100 years of prayer and music and devotion.
In the blessings of home, and husband, and hairy, slobbery dogs. Familiar sights and sounds and touches.
In missing my mom, and being even more grateful for her now, and understanding her better, than before she died.
In the biggest, most brightly colored dragonflies I have ever seen, chasing each other overhead and driving the dogs nuts.
In the heat that makes us slow, and adds life and warmth and growth to everything. And in the air conditioning that some blessed soul invented.
In people praying together, striving together, encouraging and uplifting and serving each other.
So many blessings. I hope your week has been good, too. It's bound to have had its joys and its difficulties, more one than the other. I hope that you have seen the Holy Spirit's comforting, encouraging, challenging, standing-up-for-you Presence all over the place.
Tomorrow we come, at the end of the week and at the beginning, to our sabbath rest. We will hear from Jeremiah, the reluctant Weeping Prophet, whose heart breaks at the failure of people to trust in God...and whose heart is full of the love of God and those same people, preaching a profound and powerful word of grace.You might like to open your bible tonight or tomorrow morning, and read a bit of Jeremiah. Or Lamentations. Maybe Jeremiah 18:1-7, for example. Or Lamentations 3:19-24. Or start from the beginning, and read until God grabs your attention. Sit with it awhile, and see what God may have to say to you through it. It will prepare your heart and mind for worship, and lead you to come in to your sabbath worship expectant. Because God always, always shows up.
See you in worship, fellow seekers.
In the steadfast love of God,
Pastor Dawn
