Pastor Annette's Blog
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"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
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Beloved:
My mother’s funeral was sixteen years ago this week. The ground was frozen. The sun was shining and I was great with child. That child turns sixteen on Sunday. She’s tall with a swimmer-dancer-athlete body. For the last three days she’s been sick with a terrible sinus infection. She sleeps in my bed. She asked for coloring books and new crayons when I went for her prescription. I bring her juice and feel her feverish forehead. I am remembering her first few weeks, when her arrival invaded my grief and snuggling her gave substance to my loss. I discovered the mysterious connection between grief and joy. An experience that cannot be spoken, only lived. I’ve lived it two weeks a year for sixteen years but today it feels especially poignant; for her tiny illness I suppose - reminding me of her tiny self against me in the early hours before the house wakes up. Was she well she wouldn’t stand for me to say such things. She’d roll her eyes and sigh. I’d smile and she’d say, “What?” I’d smile some more in gratitude for her health and strength of spirit, and in some anticipation of some far off day, when she aches for me and loves her kids with the very same breath. She’ll know such things soon enough, but now she needs her juice and medicine. I pray your day is filled with love given and received. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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Beloved:
Annabelle Hope was born on Saturday. She came seven weeks early and fifteen weeks later than doctors predicted. She’ll soon be home came to live with her mama, daddy, sister, two brothers, three grandmas, one grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins too - instead of the heavenly saints, with whom doctors predicted she would dwell. No offense to doctors and saints but we are thrilled to have her. She weighs five whole pounds and has lots of silky black hair. Her fingers are thin and light as worsted weight yarn, with perfect little fingernails. She breathes, eats, sleeps, burps, and cries properly. Doctors have given her a detailed To-Do list that must be completed in order to go home. She’s clicked off quite a few her first three days, impressing us with her focus and self-discipline. She’s a eating, breathing, burping miracle we can see and touch; proof to those who believe that God is not far off, absent or uninvolved. We prayed and prayed. We believe God acted, got in the way of the usual science. Why for us? Why for Annabelle? Why not for others who prayed and prayed? I don’t want to pretend to know. I only know that joy and heartbreak are neighbors, in the same town, sometimes in the same family and right now, into our has come a five pound bundle of gigantic joy that no amount of heartbreak shall overshadow - and we could not be more profoundly, humbly, happily grateful! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette Beloved:
Today I fulfill a favorite monthly pastoral duty ~ the senior adult Sunday School class lunch at Golden Corral. Ann Damon will have candles in cupcakes and we’ll sing to the ones with January birthdays. I’ll catch up on June’s grandkids, listen to a new joke from Don and get homeless shelter updates from Terry. I’ll try not to eat more than two rolls with honey butter and spend the rest of the afternoon a little sleepy but profoundly grateful for a job that sometimes feels nothing at all like work. We’re the depth of winter now. Our deacons bought and delivered twenty-five new blankets for the Interfaith Winter Shelter. Your generosity to the benevolence fund made it possible. Watch for people around you who are in need or suffering and help where you can. We are profoundly blessed with health and resources so let’s put them to the Lord’s use! You are in my daily prayers and hopefully I am in yours. peace & prayers, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works. Archives
December 2024
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