Contemplation with Cranberry Sauce

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all, and each one of us has been given our own share of grace.

                                                         Ephesians 4:5-7

Gathering for Thanksgiving this year, I have found many things for which to be thankful despite so many things that went nowhere near as expected.

I did not expect to be on the West Coast. Ever. Yet a year ago, God, with God's own wicked sense of humor, connected me to the fine folks of the Presbytery of Sacramento, and here I am on the West Coast, in California--well, actually, on Bainbridge Island in Washington for Thanksgiving with our West Coast family--which is still something else I did not imagine happening.

I am doing work I did not imagine myself doing. Ever. I am no administrator. Yet, here I am in an administrative ministry. The further surprise here is that it is ministry--I am still a pastor doing pastoral things--preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. But I am also doing it in a different way, helping get folks into conversations that need to be had, connecting folks who knew they needed connecting, but not sure how to do so, and teaching folks as I learn how the church is to be different in a time that is totally different. 

My wife is pastoring a church going through deep transitions, something I did not see coming, but now that it has, know it was meant to be. God continues to nudge us in directions of growth and exploration even two decades into work. 

My children are elsewhere, something not totally unexpected, but doing some things I never imagined them doing. Perry is in Thailand teaching English, but he is also teaching math. Math. I never saw that coming. Chelsea is working in the woods in North Carolina, not totally unexpected, helping young folks at risk find their way in life as they get lost in the woods for a time. I knew she would work with people, but not like this. 

All of these changes are ones for which I am deeply grateful. 

Then there was an election. I did not see that coming, either. I did not see how fractious our country had become. I did not see how rancorous the fallout would be. All my assumptions fell to pieces. 

But, in truth, I am grateful.

What I see in front of us now is an opportunity. 

I think way too many of us, me in the particular, were living by our assumptions, never really considering the world was other than we imagined it was. Then, bang! It all shifts. Now, we have to reassemble. We now have an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the people around us, actually seeing them and hearing them, not simply boxing them in with our assumptions. We really don't know the neighbors like we should. We really haven't gotten to know the stranger in our midst. We really haven't taken into full account the changes happening in the world and how those changes impact real, breathing human beings. 

Now we can. Now we need to if we are to move forward from this spot we never imagined being within. It is time for us to realize that God is still God, and that God is still God who is for all of us, and that God intends that we overcome all that we create to divide ourselves and reacquaint ourselves with God's intention that we live together, be together, and become the kingdom of God. 

I am thankful that there is still work to do. I am even more grateful that, by and large, I find a deepening willingness to engage in this work among the people with whom I work. 

So, it is a very blessed Thanksgiving indeed.