Dear Friends,
By the time you read this article, we will already be in the season of Advent. What lies ahead will be Christmas, with all its surprises and excitement. But it won’t be Christmas yet. There will still be waiting to do, and work to do while you wait.
I always think that the Church’s season of Advent speaks to people deeply because it reminds us what life is really like. We’re always waiting for something or other. People wait to go to school, or college, or they wait to get married. We wait for that great job, or for retirement. Lots of people wait (in good ways and bad ways) to die. There is all this waiting, and there is all the work that goes with it, since we know that what happens if we do absolutely nothing is usually disappointing.
Yet generally speaking, what we’re waiting for is never quite what we get. We can never foresee and prepare for everything. Surprises abound in the lives of most people, though not everyone welcomes them. In the end, what God and we work out together is almost always better than what we thought we wanted to begin with.
Of course, I am writing this to you as you begin a call process and seek for a new pastor. With everyone on the synod staff, I look forward to working through the call process with you. There is no telling exactly what awaits you in this process, but it will not be quite what you expect. There will be a lot of work involved, which I hope can be shared in the congregation. Patience will be required from everyone. And when your new pastor arrives, the surprises will just be starting.
In Advent we are waiting for the biggest surprise of all, for the news that God has come to be one of us. Every year the announcement is the same, and every year it captures our hearts and changes our imaginations. Christmas is never exactly what we wanted. It is better than we ever knew we hoped for.
I pray that as you work and wait through Advent, you come to know more and more deeply the presence of God among you. And I pray that the Messiah’s birth at Christmas will set you free all over again to follow Him and to find the joy that only serving Him will bring you.
In Jesus,
Bishop Richard Graham
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