October is here. To be 100% honest I’m not entirely sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. The days are getting shorter, and the nights are getting colder. The leaves are beginning to change, that is where the dryness of the past months haven’t caused them to fall early. For me this fall means Football and Church History. Football, well that’s flag and pads this year for the kids. Will is playing modified and flag and Barb is playing flag. I’m busy running the league and coaching. As for Church History, I’m teaching a class for the School of Christian Living and Serving.
As the air gets a little crisper (I’m speaking hopefully here). Every morning as I take Will to the bus I get to look up at the steeple. This morning when I did so it was with the great news that the work is done on it. After what feels like eternity the rot on the façade, the rotten steeple corners and most important the rotten structural beams are all repaired and replaced. And before I go any further let me offer all of you a BIG HUGE THANK YOU! On the one side many of you made gifts that helped to defray the cost of this repair. And even if you weren’t able to make a gift you put up with birds in the belfry, with a lift that interfered with the daily life of the church, a lift on the columbarium, and all the noises and inconvenience that it brought.
I’m a firm believer that in everything there is a lesson to be found. And in this repair of the steeple there is one there as well. We had our patience tested as we waited to get what to us were obvious problems repaired. There were hiccups of weather, delayed start dates and even on the last day there was a leak in the hydraulics of the lift. Through all of this you all showed a resilience, flexibility and a willingness to adjust to an evershifting reality.
Life seldom goes and happens the way we want it to. Sometimes things happen for the better and sometimes the worst that could happen does. I remember way back when the steeple was going to be a few weeks to fix with a guy hanging from a little rope chair and doing all the work, hopefully without heavy winds. Two years, a lot of grants, a whole lot of labor, a very generous congregation and more patience than many of us thought we had and it is finally done. It showed us how a very difficult almost impossible thing can be made possible. If you don’t think that it was almost impossible ask Dennis about all the ideas that were put forward for repair.
As the steeple shines brightly to all who see it, it serves both as a sign of the body of believers below, and who their savior is. But it also shows how a congregation can through God’s help do something almost impossible. As we look forward, as we put the church growth plan into action, and as we seek to bring the light of Christ to our world, I want you all to look up or look out and see that steeple. I want you to think about all that we all put into and put up with while it was repaired. And I want you to remember what Christ said in Matthew 19:26. He said, “for mortals it is impossible but for God all things are possible.”
It is not going to be easy for us to work to grow this body of believers. It is going to be down right difficult. But, it is not impossible. It is possible through the one who went to the cross for us, who created us, and day by day sustains us. Amen.