February 2010
As I write you, I have just returned from a presbytery meeting, a regular gathering of pastors and elders from throughout our Hudson River Presbytery. As often happens in unrehearsed discussions of our business, themes began to emerge, telling a larger story of what is happening in churches in our area.
As our presbytery approved a budget reflecting a decrease in income, the cutting of two staff positions, and no pay raises for remaining staff, and as many churches faced their own deficit budgets in upcoming annual meetings, one story heard over and over was of people struggling during difficult times. While the stories began around economic cutbacks, some also alluded to depression and despair.
At the same meeting, people also told stories of hope: Shepp Sheppard works on our presbytery’s behalf to share God’s love with those who are incarcerated, and is organizing members of our churches to lobby in Albany on March 16. Some churches shared their experiences with English as a Second Language programs - both starting them and celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of such ministries. We heard stories of communities still sharing God’s love and vibrant faith in Jesus Christ, even when their coffers weren’t full. (I suspect many of our churches, rooted in a Scottish heritage, have a history of making the most of a
tight budget!)
On a day when we remembered both the continuing crisis facing Haiti as well as those facing the crises of unemployment, when our state government seemed unable to prevent drastic cuts in education, and our own president was preparing to face the nation in light of political paralysis around health care reform and our national debt, it would have been easy to dwell in the stories of despair. Yet one pastor put it into perspective. He referred to some of these crises as kairos moments, using the biblical word for times when God’s eternal time breaks into our chronological time, when our only choice is to look for what God is
doing, because nothing else will do. This may be more my interpretation of what he said.) He reminded me of the way situations that seem to be the end of the world for us are opportunities for God to act, and for God’s people to do things they never would have imagined. For instance, while God must never have wanted death and destruction on the scale we have seen it in Haiti, in a kairos moment, this might be a way for new building and international concern to support a people in ways that bring us to reconsider ministry priorities, to wonder about new ways of sharing God’s love with a surrounding neighborhood.
Kairos moments happen all the time, for those who are open to them – moments when God moves through chaos and confusion to create new bonds with others or discoveries about ourselves – that would not have happened otherwise. One of you (and it may be obvious to those of you who know him) shared of new friendships that have happened in the course of serving others through the Salvation Army. In my own life, they happen when I feel like I’m at the end of a rope – exhausted or overwhelmed – and one of my children does something funny, throwing me a lifeline. This is not to trivialize the difficult aspects of our reality, but to say that God’s Spirit is still at work. As we approach Lent, a holy time in our lives as Christians, may we all be blessed with kairos.
Blessings, Laura
|
