Beloved:

         My suitcase is officially in storage. The patio tomato plants are winding down.  A second wave of garden tomatoes is coming on.  The college junior is piling her boxes and furniture in the garage to haul to Savannah this weekend while the man-son races about getting vaccines and visas in order, for his year abroad in Taiwan.  Besides that, the air smells different than two weeks ago ~ what was green grass is now brown leaves.   

         I love summer and would be sad to see it pass except for how much I also love the first half of fall.  The short dark days of November and December I love because I knit more and wear pajamas more hours of the day.  Then it’s winter, when the chicken water freezes and the hens don’t lay many eggs.  But we get to wear sweaters and eat chili for supper.  Then the days start lasting longer and the daffodil bulbs push through and it’s back to the nursery for garden plants again.  

         In June I never think about winter; but when the seasons change, every season is on my mind at once, as well as every season I have lived till now.  How is it I am fifty-three years old?  In college I imagined fifty-three and seventy-five were practically next door neighbors.  At forty I knew better.  At fifty-three I realize I was right in college after all.  The years may be short but none of them is ever lost.  All fifty-three of them are always with me here and now.  Each new turn of season is every turn of season I’ve ever known before.  On the breeze of my fifty-third is the scent of my twenty-second and my seventh too.  I am every age I’ve ever been, when the Indiana leaves begin to fall.  What a precious life this is!  I pray this note finds you full of gratitude for another day to be alive.

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

Beloved:

    A white Baptist preacher was doing his part in the Civil Rights Movement when he came to think his place wasn’t with the movement proper but with the white supremacists on the other side of town.  This news was not well received by his politically like-minded white friends (read liberals), but he believed Jesus had sent him.  So to the KKK meeting places he did carry himself to preach the gospel as he knew it.  Those folks were about as receptive as he thought they’d be, which wasn’t very, so the preacher ended up pretty lonely all around.  Except for being smack dab in the middle of God’s will which, as the missionaries of my childhood said, is always the very safest place to be.  I was grown before I knew the word safest means something altogether different to missionaries than to my fourteen-year-old self.  

    I took Brother to a Dragonfly off my shelf again hoping for some clarity in these days.  It did not disappoint.  Only humans do such terrible things to each other, Will Campbell wrote.  To make things right, we have to recognize the humanity in the terrorist as well as the terrorized.  Apart from life in Christ I have no idea how to begin.  A modern preacher reminded me this week that the wisest of us is never better than half right about the ways of God.  I should be so wise.  Our best hope is to pray, then pray some more.  Then hold hands and tell the truth with more humility than usual.  

    It’s raining, finally.  What a gift.  I pray the day finds you full of hope and courage as we seek to be his people.  

~peace and prayers,
pastor annette

Beloved:

     So very glad to be back at work after a lovely three weeks of vacation.  I joined my husband in Seoul, South Korea for two weeks then came back to Bloomington for a few days and spent the last weekend with all the kids at my daughter’s house in Cincinnati.

     On the very first day of vacation I got some not-so-amazing chicken salad in the Detroit airport.   Thankfully I ate it on the plane, so the food poisoning didn’t strike until a few hours after I landed in Seoul.  Then again, forty-eight hours later, it struck for real.  Carl’s Korean students got me to Dr. Yoo, a wonderful English-speaking doctor who ever so kindly shepherded me through an entirely different and far less complicated healthcare system.  I bounced right back and had a great time roaming a foreign city by myself and eating amazing food.  I went to parks and museums and markets and a martyr’s shrine.  I read lots of books, took lots of naps, knitted, quilted, gardened and played with my dogs.  I tried (and failed!) not to read the news, so I had to pray and journal and breathe deeply more than should be required on vacation but to a good end all the same.

     This week’s passage is Acts 17:16-34, should you care to read ahead.  Bible Chat will meet on Thursday at its regularly scheduled time.  I’ll be away from the office this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday & Wednesday) to attend services for Vaughn Delong.  My heart just aches for Nate and Nick and Julia as they tell their daddy good-bye.  What comfort they will have in being so well fathered by a man who loved and served the Lord as Vaughn did.  I look forward to seeing you on Sunday morning.  

​~ peace & prayers,
​pastor annette
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     Hakyoung attended Global Women’s Gathering when her husband was a student at IU ​in 2014-2015.
We had a wonderful evening and dinner with her family at their home in Seoul.  Sweet!