Breathe

I hope that this week feels like a chance to get a deep breath. The holidays can be fun and wonderful with travel, holiday meals and traditions- but they can also be stressful, with lots of logistics to manage and families out of their regular routines. The holidays can bring sadness, as we mourn for people that we have lost, and they can leave us feeling overwhelmed. So this week, I hope that each of you get a chance to breathe - to breathe in, and feel God's blessing and strength, and then to breathe out and know that you rest in the love of God. 

God loves each one of us as precious children. God calls each one of us child- son or daughter, loved and beloved. We can rest in this- we can know it, and feel peace because of it.

So this week, in a moment of quiet, I invite you to take a breath in, and as you breathe out, center yourself, and know that God loves you. 

-Pastor Deborah Huggins

Gratitude

Thanksgiving is coming soon (how did that happen?), and once we hit November, I always start to think about gratitude a little more than usual. Sometimes it's hard, being grateful when we're confronted with the daily news and tragedies in the world. But have you seen a list of what a little bit of gratitude can do to a person? Better productivity, more optimism, better emotional health, greater physical health benefits...the list goes on and on with just how much good some gratitude can do a person. Thanksgiving is always a natural reminder to be grateful, but why can't we celebrate thankfulness all year long? Maybe we don't get to see extended family all year long and enjoy some amazing food that the holiday warrants, but there's no reason we cannot continue the attitude of gratefulness every single day of the year. Imagine if we all tried a little harder - our little part of the world could collectively be healthier, happier, more productive, nicer, kinder, & more willing to give and help others. To me, that's an incredible benefit for just a little bit of focus and effort on the positive. I know it's hard sometimes...but there is always at least 10 things we can offer up our thanks for at any given time. We are pretty fortunate in the grand scheme of things...let's never take that for granted, this holiday season and throughout the year. And most importantly, let's pass that attitude of thanks along to those who may need it a little more than us. The ripple effect could go a long way.

Rooted and Grounded in Love

The news is filled with it—stories of another terror attack, this time close to home, in Manhattan. A man drives a rented truck into the bike lanes trying to kill as many people as he can. There is a sad familiarity to it, echoed not just in other stories about terror attacks, but other stories about the ways human beings deliberately try to hurt each other, or turn a blind eye to the pain of other people. It’s hard to know what to do about any of it, but it’s clear how all the stories can leave us feeling. They can leave us feeling afraid. “Lock the doors. Get a better security system. Buy a gun,” we’re told.

There is an antidote to the fear, and it is administered in religious communities like Central Church. Oh, I know that religion has a lot for which to answer that is not good, but in the process of pointing out the failures, the important contributions of religious communities have been overlooked. As the Apostle Paul put it long ago, the Church is to be a place where people “are being rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17), and there is ample evidence that in mature religious communities like Central Church, that is exactly what happens, just as there is ample evidence that, in the rush away from such communities, people are left a bit rootless, ungrounded in anything but fear.

You don’t have to live that way. Our doors are open you, your family. And if you aren’t around here, my guess is that there is a church just like us near to where you are. It might seem a bit old fashioned, but if you look again, that’s really just a sign of the maturity of being rooted and grounded in something deeper than today’s headlines.

--Pastor Don Steele