How to Have Your Heart Lifted

June 14, 2023

Beloved: 
          Driving home from work last night I was the best kind of tired I know.  That good work tired, this time from Day 1 of the first Vacation Bible School we’ve held since the pandemic.  Every body part that could be sore was either pinching, stabbing or throbbing.  But I took some Tylenol, slept almost ten hours and I’m ready to go back for another round today.

          Everyone ate and sang and played and crafted.  They listened to stories and learned some science and then they ate some more.  The little kids are all so sweet and the big kid helpers are so much fun.  The baby class has two members who tiptoe and toddle around like they run the place.  Adult volunteers work their hearts out.  I’m so grateful for our church staff, Fan and Rob, pulling so much extra duty to make all of this work for this group of young ones.

​          The biblical theme is Jesus Helps Us Do Hard Things, hardly a lesson just for kids.  Life is riddled with the difficult for nearly everyone I know.  Health problems, financial difficulties, relationship struggles, work pressures, and addiction affect our personal lives.  In the larger context, communities and our country grow ever more divided, leaving the least and the marginalized among us ever more vulnerable and endangered.  All of which amounts to a setting where Jesus comes along to help us do the kind of hard things to which he called us:  kindness, justice and humility.  Such talk can sound like work too big for us, when it’s really not, hardly more than welcoming little ones in the name of Jesus.  I don’t know a soul who wouldn’t like to be invited for some simple food and music, so long as they didn’t feel like they were being tricked into a situation they’d not otherwise choose to enter.  And however hard we work on themes and decorations, I can tell that what kids like most is being with other kids, just like every grownup everywhere.  No one likes feeling lonely all the time.
          If you’re around the east side of Bloomington Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evenings this week between 5:30-7:45 and you’d like to have your heart lifted, stop in and see what’s going on at UBC.  I’ll even find a little job for you if you want to help.  

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette