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| Millennial MomentsMy favorite comment about the change of the millennium came from a cartoon in which the preacher was saying, "The world is NOT coming to an end, so you'll just have to suffer along and learn to cope." My second favorite comment came from Dave Berry, who warned that when Y2K came along, photosynthesis would cease and some places would be without gravity. If you're reading this, we're still here, still coping, and tomorrow we'll have to get up and greet another day. And if there's any lack of 'gravity,' it's the kind that means 'seriousness,' not the kind that means our feet are still firmly planted on the earth. Thank God for the perspective of scripture, which reminds us that "a thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone," and that God is always with us, always coming anew to be with us. I had a New Testament professor in seminary who pointed out that sometimes change comes so fast it does, in a way, seem like 'the end of the world.' He also stressed that 'end of world' can mean transformation, not necessarily disaster. As followers of Jesus, our faith is that Christ comes to bring about transformation. Christ comes to restore justice, and bring peace, and create healing, and offer forgiveness and new life. So as life goes on, in the year 2000 and beyond, we pray that indeed these are the 'upheavals' that will take place in our world. On December 22, I watched the sun set and the full moon rise from a place on the Silver Strand which has been designed to mark the summer and winter solstices. The concrete marker had these words engraved: time--continuity--change. Sometimes change comes dramatically into our lives and into our world, but still the sun rises and sets, and the seasons complete their cycles. May we learn to live gracefully with both the change and the continuity in our lives, thanking God with every moment of time that we are given to live and to love and to serve one another. In Jesus' Name, Pastor April |
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