beneath every grief and fear is the certainty of Jesus’ demolition of death, the promise that we may be crushed, but we are not forsaken . . . perplexed, but not driven to despair.
Depending on the grief, that certainty may live in the far reaches of the heart and mind, making the offhand remark of a good friend a gift they don’t even know they’ve given. Life is sweet and salty, ever turning from one to the other, grief as much a season as joy, as we lean into the end of the song, which is the very hope of our lives and our life together in this faith. I couldn’t be more grateful for you.
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Beloved:
I sit here, wondering to myself if I am past the point in life in which I might hope to be good at this work, or if I am still gathering the experience required to be good at it eventually. I read once that architects generally do their very best work in their sixties and seventies. Maybe the same is true for other professions, including preaching. Maybe it just takes forty years to get the hang of humanity and the scriptures - what James Cone calls the two sources of theology - forty years to see all the way through people, culture and the Bible page in front of us, until we recognize the patterns at play and the meaning therein. If this is the goal, I’m able to locate how far I’ve come and how far I have to go in this work called preaching. As well, I see the constant task is to stay curious, keep reflecting and practice, practice, practice. Which, I suppose is true from craft to craft, building buildings, teaching preschool, playing music or making art. Do any of us create the work we imagined when we first imagined it? Not me. I have sermons in me I can’t preach. I don’t possess the skill set required and won’t without the necessary practice. Does any of this ring true for you too? These are the things on my mind this summer morning as I sit in this quiet office where I’ve spent the last thirty years of my work life. All day I hear the traffic of busy people at work. My mind travels all over the world, where people are working to keep human life fed and moving, thriving and enlivened in so many, many ways. How perfect any given sermon is feels much less important than whether or not I am holding up my part of this essential task - to enliven those around me. It matters to do good work well, I’ve decided again this morning. I pray your heart and hands are busy at the same. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette 
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I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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July 2022
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