Happy, Proud, and Content

Beloved:

    I’m home for three nights before heading back to the airport, this time for a big Baptist meeting in Texas.  I’m trying to look forward to it, but I’d rather be here getting ready for Vacation Bible School – because local church is what I love:  people worshipping, eating, praying and working together for the love of Jesus in our lives . . . for our longing to love others well.  This is my home.  You are my home.

    An unknowing bystander to a big Baptist meeting may suspect we’ve gathered to compare buildings, budgets and batting averages (preaching scores).  I wish we talked about the thousand little faithworks of our precious people.  I’d tell how lovely it was to go on vacation and know you’d manage everything beautifully without me.  How when I drove up to church my first day back, a teenager was already here laying mulch in the church flower beds.  How last week’s email is full of plans for helping one member move and carrying meals to another.  How the kitchen is scrubbed clean and restored after the recent rodent invasion.  How downstairs is full of half-made paper palm trees for VBS.  And how a neighbor dropped by in need of groceries and I found the deacon pantry full as usual. 

    This is church and I couldn’t be happier, prouder or more content to be in it with the likes of you!  

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette