Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Past, Present and Futures

The observant among us will have noticed how well our Dinners with Dann are going based solely on my waistline.  For sure the dinners have been better than expected in helping us to tell the story “that was and is and is to come” in our historic and hopeful walk of faith here in Madison.   I loved hearing about June Harrell hitching rides after church just so she could share a Moon Pie and NeHi with her friends or the time that Bishop Allan supported the vestry and their Sr. Warden Charlie Mason following Brian Black’s courageous and grace-filled last year on earth. 
There have been all sorts of good stories about what is happening right now at Advent.  I’ll be the first to celebrate the success of Advent-ures as a faithful caring for our children and their friends as they grow spiritually.  Hearing how each of our significant outreach efforts were begun and how they’ve grown and spurred other community ministries into being stirs the confidence of each of us at the table. 
There is a third part to our conversations that is just as comforting and exciting as are the present and the past when we celebrate them.  What’s so wonderful about this third part is that it is not just one story or a small handful of successes but an infinitely emerging and expanding picture of Advent tomorrow, next year, and long into the future. 
The title of this blurb uses “futures” because there are so many possibilities, so many hopes, so many dreams.  Whether we can realize all of them only time will tell, but in order for time to tell we have to hope.  Because of who God is and because of how we know Him in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we have to consider all those imagined and awesome and in some cases frightening futures as ours.  Given to us by the God who loves us and loves the world we live in more than we can know. 
And so we can move into as many futures as we can imagine because our hope is in a God who has been with us, and is with us now and has promised to be with us to the end of the ages.


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