September 8, 2023
“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
~ Lamentations 3:21-23 NRSV
On Sunday, St. Paul’s UCC will celebrate its 275th anniversary as a congregation. That’s over 100,000 mornings of steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness, new each day. It’s a staggering, hard-to-get-your-head-around number, multiplied exponentially by each person; incalculable for the entire population of the world stretching back through the ages, and yet to come.
History, it seems, keeps track of big things: politics, wars, floods and famines, pandemics, civilizations rising, and collapsing; and technological breakthroughs: tools from iron rather than flint, the printing press, steam engines, internal combustion engines, airplanes and spaceships, atomic power, and weapons. The big things impact the world in big ways. And yet, while those big events are happening, morning by morning people like you and me awaken and move into a new day. And without our even realizing it, except from hindsight, the long, slow, faithful work of God has been the underlying and overlaying constant. Like fish swimming in water, and humans held to this planet by gravity, we are unaware of the things that hold life, our planet, the universe together.
What might happen if we paused after waking, or after that quick trip to the toilet, and stopped to pay attention to the things we take for granted: morning light playing on the ceiling, the sound of birds outside our window, the incredible fortune of having a ceiling and windows, eyes to see and ears to hear, and a bed from which to rise?
Shortly after St. Paul’s was founded, the French and Indian War began, and not long after that a revolution, and founding of a nation. Shortly before St. Paul’s celebrated its 100th anniversary, with a country deeply divided by slavery, George Rye and 33 members of the church were excommunicated for their support of abolition. At the 200th anniversary, the world was only beginning to rebuild after WW2.
Through all those years, and all those events, morning by morning God’s love and mercy were new, every morning. People of faith, real, normal, not perfect people were part of St. Paul’s, doing the things that people do, which is often messy. Call this to mind, have hope! When we live aware of God, and where God is active, each day, and when we imperfectly join in God’s steadfast love and mercy, God is faithful in doing something far bigger and longer lasting that we will ever be able to imagine. Our story, our song – as we look back – and dream forward – isn’t really our story and our song. It is God’s story and song, lived out new every morning. May we know it, tell our stories, sing our songs of God’s faithfulness, new every morning. ~ Anne
Wayfinding 