Dear Incarnation,
What a week we've just had — as a nation, as a church, as individuals. The news onslaught continues, and because we live in the federal government's "company town," that news impacts many people in our community in some way. Jobs lost or at risk or dramatically altered in focus. Childcare arrangements upended. Future plans suddenly in question. Longstanding projects abruptly ending. I've heard from multiple people in our congregation a sentiment along the lines of, "I feel like everything I've planted and tended has been pulled up by the roots." The uncertainty and disorientation of it all is palpable.
Amidst these changes in our city and nation, we are also walking through changes as a church. We held our first Maryland service on Sunday night! Over forty people, including two visiting families, came to pray, sing, and break bread together; read Katie's update here. It was a beautiful, hopeful, and yes, disorienting evening full of emotions. I was joyful as the gospel was preached and lived in both places; I was sad to miss our Marylanders in the morning and our Virginians in the evening; I was grateful for Katie as a colleague, co-laborer, and shepherd; my imagination and creativity were stirred by so many new possibilities; and I was exhausted by the end of it all.
The monthly Maryland service is a good change, an attempt to faithfully discern and respond to what God is doing in our midst. But all change, even very good change, brings disorientation. It is normal to feel a mix of happy-sad as things shift in our congregation over the coming months. It is normal to feel uncomfortable in the uncertainty, especially with so much uncertainty in our broader world.
Within our church, as in our world, we must find a way to bring our disorientation, grief, discomfort, and fears to God. We must find a way to hold fast to hope in uncertainty. And as fellow members of the body of Christ, we must learn how to do this together. We need each other and we belong to one another, as Sunday's reading from 1 Corinthians made clear.
The ultimate consequence of all the world's changes is always obscured from our view. Sometimes when things are uprooted, new and needed things spring up that we could not have imagined. Perhaps someday we will see a gracious purpose in these changes, even the ones we most fear (the God who holds the universe together is, after all, abounding in grace). We can hope and pray for such an outcome — for ourselves, for our neighbors, for vulnerable populations, for our church, for our society as a whole. But we cannot know or see such things now, from this side of things.
But God comes to us from the other side of things. In the Incarnation, he brings the gracious purposes of his kingdom into the disorientation and uncertainty of our world. And he invites us to participate in that kingdom in small ways, every day, together. Every Sunday, every small group, every Midday Prayer, every Midweek Eucharist, every meal delivered, every scripture read, every act of prayer and service and welcome and forgiveness and patience is an opportunity to experience the gracious life of the kingdom in the painful trials of earth. It all feels so small, and it is. But this is how we practice hope together. And this is how we bear witness to a kingdom that has already come near, yet is still so far off.
If you'd like to talk or pray through any of these changes and how they're impacting you, please reach out to me or Katie or Russell; we'd love to listen and pray.
Finally, I'll sign off with this poem from Malcolm Guite, which I recently appreciated:
Because We Hunkered Down
These bleak and freezing seasons may mean grace
When they are memory. In time to come
When we speak truth, then they will have their place,
Telling the story of our journey home,
Through dark December and stark January
With all its disappointments, through the murk
And dreariness of frozen February,
When even breathing seemed unwelcome work.
Because through all of these we held together,
Because we shunned the impulse to let go,
Because we hunkered down through our dark weather,
And trusted to the soil beneath the snow,
Slowly, slowly, turning a cold key,
Spring will unlock our hearts and set us free.
This Sunday is Candlemas, one of my favorite feasts of the church year. Simeon and Anna are the prophets of hunkering down, of holding onto hope amidst all evidence to the contrary. Bring your candles to be blessed along with the church's candles for the year. See you soon!
Hunkering down with you,
Amy
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