Coming Home Every Week
Holy Spirit’s school has been aflutter with activity this week because it’s time for homecoming. The students have been wearing spirit clothes all week. Mums have been made and distributed (a sentence I would not have understood before moving to Texas). There is a pep rally Friday afternoon in preparation for the big game. While all of this the outward facing celebration is joyous, I can also attest to the significant amount of time and camaraderie that moms have shared behind the scenes getting everything prepared. Community celebrations are wonderful because they bind us together and deepen our mutual commitment to the values and identity we share.
The church certainly has our own versions of this. We have special music and decorations for important feasts. There are ongoing behind the scenes preparations week in and week out. We even wear special clothes sometimes like on Pentecost when everyone wears red. All these parts of our shared life serve the same purpose to deepen our mutual commitment to our shared experience and identity. What may be a little unique to the church is how often this description fits. We come together for such celebration at least 3-4 times almost every month. There are busier months like December which is saturated in wonderful gatherings. There are slower times like summer when we settle into more of a spiritual routine of faith growth.
All our celebrations and observances serve to join us together (to congregate us) in the identity of being God’s people redeemed by grace and empowered by the Spirit for ministry. God in Christ is such a complete promise and fulfillment of our hope and need that there will always be depths of meaning, assurance, and comfort to discover. Christmas is past, but we have our Annual Meeting to celebrate all that God has done inn the year past and anticipate what God has in store in the year ahead. We have special events like our community auction, vestry retreat, and Diocesan Council coming up and Ash Wednesday will mark the beginning of Lent in just over a month. In all that we share, may God bind us more closely in our identity as people redeemed by grace, loved completely by our creator, and sent forth to care for others.
We love you and God loves you,
Josh Condon+