V A C A T I O N
I am up early, earlier than I should be, but I am now officially on vacation and I want to get a couple things done before I hit the road. I am taking two full weeks off probably for the first time in my life! I am looking forward to it. I have a bunch of things going on, the last week we will be down in Ohio visiting my inlaws which will be great as it has been over a year since I have seen them down there. Before that I will take my daughter down to Luther College to begin her Junior year (yikes!) This weekend before all that happens my daughter and I will do a little father daughter bonding up on Washington Island.
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Washington Island is one of those places that holds a very special spot in my heart for many reasons. I was fortunate to serve as a pastor up there at Trinity Lutheran for 6 years. Life on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan is unique, you rely on the ferry, no bridges, you rely on your neighbors, for that is all you have when the rubber hits the road.
In celtic spirituality there is something that is known as a “thin place.” A thin place is where the distance between heaven and earth is well, thin. The island is a thin place for me, not as much of me and the world around me, gets between me and God in this place. I have other thin places as well, the coast of Washington State and up in the Cascades as well. Many people find that they need to periodically make pilgrimages to the mountains or to the sea periodically to keep their lives in balance, they need thin places to reconnect with God.
Well, now it is time to pack… Blessings and peace be with you!
Question: Do you have a “thin place?” If so where is it? How often to you go to that place and what is it, if you can put your finger on it that this place does for you?
Leave a reply if you will!
The Word: Sustains – Day 30
Seven Wonders of the Word
“10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10-11
I admit it… I don’t wait well.
Never have.
Maybe it is related to the attention thing that I struggle with from time to time. Maybe it is in part due to the 24/7 nature of the world in which we live. I am not certain.
I have gotten a little better at waiting though. For six years I served a congregation on a small island in the middle of Lake Michigan. You can’t do much in a hurry on an island, you just can’t.
First off, you need to take a ferry to get on or off the island and you don’t have any say over the schedule. For a goodly chunk of the winter months there is only one ferry a day, and that is if the weather permits and the ice cooperates. During the summers the ferry’s run quite often, but as it is a tourist area, they are often packed and just because a ferry leaves at 10 o’clock, doesn’t mean you are going to get on it! Sometimes… um…. often… it means you have to wait.
One late spring, my family was to head off island so they could go visit my in-laws over spring break, as it was Lent, and pastors are sorta busy then, I couldn’t go. However it just so happened the school district needed someone to pick up the Drivers Ed car in Algoma and drive it back. So, we caught the ferry and my family dropped me off to get the car, and they headed on to Ohio, I turned around and spent the night in Sturgeon Bay until I could get the ferry in the morning. Next morning I show up at the dock, no boat. The ice had shifted overnight and they couldn’t get the ferry out of the harbor. So… back to the hotel I went. Twice. The next day was no better. It wasn’t until the Coast Guard ice breaker made it to the island that the ferry was able to make it out. 3 days, with nothing to do… well that isn’t true, I had much to do back home, but not there… not stuck in a hotel.
So, I waited.
Turns out I met some wonderful folks as I wondered around Sturgeon Bay. I had time to talk with fellow islanders who were stuck like me. I had time to think, to sleep, to pray and to well watch some really bad TV. But all in all when I got back to the island I was in good shape for Holy Week, I was well rested and I and ready to do what I needed to do.
You see the guys who run the ferry line do what they can to keep you safe. Sometimes that means waiting. Sometimes that means you don’t get to do what you want to do, but when you get on the ferry you can trust that they do what they can to get you to where you are going!
God’s Word is like that. Sometimes we have our agendas, our ideas of the way God’s justice, and God’s will should be done. It’s just that they are not always God’s ways. This passage from Isaiah we read today is in part one of the reasons I was able to say “yes” to God’s call for me to be a pastor. God will get done what God needs to do, it will accomplish that which God proposes.
We hear the word and trust in its promise, not our abilities. Yes we each are given ministries, and skills we are to use, and God works in and among them. God’s promise is sure, it has defeated the grave and we can count on it. This Word sustains us in our work, in our love and in our relationships. It is the rock in which we can trust, for God’s Word will succeed in the thing which God has sent it.
Today I will ponder where I need to wait on the Lord, and where I am being called to be a part of that redeeming word so others might be loved, forgiven and have life in that Word.
The Vigil
Honestly, when the idea was first layed out to me when I was prepapring for Holy Week, my first year on Washington Island, the fine worship board just sort of said, yeah…. we do this. I was like… ugggg… I need another worship service in Holy Week like another hole in the head. Well Trinity has a little chappel across the road, a stavkirke, a replica of the old wooden churches in Norway. We held the service over there often plowing through snow to get there and set up the candles.
Well, I have been doing vigil services now for.. whoa… 10 years and I missed it last year cause it was the other pastors turn to do it, and I’ll be danged if I didn’t miss it.
What’s a vigil? you may ask, well I am glad you did.
Well a generic vigil is a time of waiting, of keeping watch, of being awake when you would normally be sleeping.
The Easter Vigil is what I am talking about our worship resource talks about it this way: “This is the night! This is our Passover with Christ from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from death to life. Tonight is the heart of our celebration of the Three Days and the pinnacle of the church’s year. The resurrection of Christ is proclaimed in word and sign, and we gather around a pillar of fire, hear ancient stories of our faith, welcome new sisters and brothers at the font, and share the food and drink of the promised land. Raised with Christ, we go forth into the world, aflame with the good news of the resurrection.”
The Easter Vigil for us is modified. We sort of wimp out, we have it at 7:00 p.m. and not many of us are actually sleeping by then!
But the point of the vigil is not really in the staying awake until the sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. For in fact Christ has been raised for quite some time, but the vigil is a great service for the stories and how those stories continue to feed and live in us today.
We read the salvation history in stories from scripture, from creation, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Jonah and the big fish, and my favorite… Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the firey furnace! (honesly I just like sayin; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!)
Then after these stories… we baptize and in the waters of baptism these stories of salvation continue! This year we have two! Devin, a very energetic 2 year old and Robert who is in his early 20′s. These two are not related, and they may only run into each other periodically over the years in worship, but they become my brothers and brothers to every baptized child of God out there. The Good News, the Gospel of Easter is summed up in the waters of baptism, we are put to death in these waters and raised up to new life in Christ.
Oh.. I got so worked up I almost forgot to mention that we start this service outside in the dying day light with a fire. I get to start the fire…. woot! Then we all grab candles and light them off the newly lit paschal candle and walk into the darkened church and then boom as the light fades outside the light in the church erupts!
The service is a little long, but the good news is with all those stories and the baptisms I don’t need to preach much, the word carries the weight just fine.
We close this service with the gift of Holy Communion, blessed to and prepared to celebrate Easter in the morning… it is a great service.
It is great I think in part because it is in the dark of night when we are reminded of what God has done for us when things looked darkest…. and in the light of a new dawn we can celebrate this love and hope that has been with us since the beginning.
May God bless you and keep you this Easter as you become what you already are in Jesus Christ.
