Pastor's E-Letter

Pastor's E-Letter

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Thanksgiving Sunday

Last week, on the Interfaith Mental Health Panel, Rev. Dr. John Baggett closed our time together reflecting on the powerful, unifying force of gratitude in our lives. He shared, appropriately, that gratitude was a value in each of the faiths that were present on the call. In addition, the American holiday of Thanksgiving is an example of a place that we can unify in that value. It felt like a cap on a beautiful afternoon and focused our hearts toward our upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

The truth of the matter is, gratitude has a powerful effect on us in many avenues of life. It seems that whatever you may be searching for advice on, gratitude shows up. Whether we are thinking about our generosity, our mental health, the upcoming holiday season, our morning and evening quiet time practices, best practices for relationships, and building connections, gratitude somehow finds its way to the center. It is powerful, popular, at the center of many faiths, and, of course, at the center of the Thanksgiving holiday.

As we consider Thanksgiving this coming week, we can focus on our faith and think of the many times in Scripture where the writer gives glory and thanksgiving to God. It happens again and again; whether in an important battle in the Old Testament, giving glory for a covenant, throughout the power of the Psalms (even the ones where there is lament!), in Jesus’s ministry including at the Last Supper, and into Paul’s letters to the early church. When we consider, like much of Scripture does, the power of God to create, sustain, redeem, and love all of us, and when we survey the earth, it is a natural response to give glory to God and give thanks. What a loving, sacrificing, generous God we serve!

The power of gratitude that Rev. Dr. John Baggett highlighted in our Mental Health Panel is that when we take a step back, give honor and glory to God, and look at the good (even simply a beautiful sunrise or God’s grace through the care of someone else), we feel better. We remind ourselves that we aren’t in control. We can look at the long road of our lives and see how God has walked with us through terrible and beautiful things. We can see God’s handiwork in the skies and in the minutiae of our lives. In a season like the one we have been weathering in the pandemic, it can help us remember that God is still Lord and in control over the long moral arc of our universe, through the end of time. When we see who God is in Jesus, we say, what great news!

This Sunday in worship, we’ll give glory to God for this year’s blessings. We’ll also hear a story of gratitude- and lack-there-of- in Luke 17. Jesus has much to say about our prayers of gratitude, but the story of the ten lepers is one that shows gratitude’s power in full example. In our lives, we can be the one leper that returns to our benefit, the benefit of our communities, and the benefit of our world.

Wherever you are, I hope you’ll join us to give thanks to God for who God is, and what God is up to in our lives. We’re excited to walk with you in that.

See you then,
Pastor Allee

Posted by Allee Willcox with

All Saints Sunday

In May of 2019, we hosted an Abide Conference for women at our church. It was my first Abide at Suntree UMC and a wonderful opportunity to share with other women about our faith. Towards the end of the conference, I received the news that Rachel Held Evans, prolific Christian writer and 37-year-old mother, had passed away from a sudden and severe illness. I was devastated. On a day filled with wonderful women’s ministry, I lost a saint in my journey of womanhood and faith. Rachel Held Evans had been a companion to me through many faith questions and my call to ministry. My friends and I frequently sent texts back and forth in college saying, “Did you read Rachel’s newest blog?” I felt like we were on a first-name basis. Her death was a gut punch.

This week, Rachel’s final work of writing was released to the public. Compiled and edited by her friend Jeff Chu, the book of essays entitled Wholehearted Faith feels like Rachel’s voice reaching back through time and out of the grave to speak to us again.

I began reading Wholehearted Faith on Tuesday, the day after All Saints Day. I can’t recommend it yet (because I haven’t finished it) but I laughed out loud when I read the following quote in the middle of preparation for this week’s All Saints Sunday. Rachel still found a way to speak and help me ask and answer questions of my faith:

“For better or for worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and then there are seasons when our faith holds us. In those latter instances, I am more thankful than ever for all the saints, past and present, who said yes and whose faith sustains mine. They believe for me when I’m not sure I believe. They hold on to hope for me when I’ve run out of hope. They are the old lady next to me in the pew and the little kid behind me who recites the entirety of the Apostles’ Creed on my behalf on those Sundays when I cannot bring myself to say all those ancient words wholeheartedly--- Is this what I really believe? They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page, because they would make even my most foulmouthed friend blush.” - Wholehearted Faith, pg. 3

Rachel Held Evans was certainly a saint to me. She was ordinary, sometimes foul-mouthed, and honest. I am grateful for her words as I doubted my faith. She helped my faith hold me when I could not hold it. But Rachel and Christian “celebrities” like her are not the only saints in our lives. Rachel’s words certainly apply to the saints in our church, like the ones that we will celebrate on Sunday. They also apply to your loved ones.

The thing is, I felt like I knew Rachel on a first name basis, but I didn’t. Reading her husband Dan’s words, and her friends as they write about this book, I know that the Saint Rachel that I knew is only part of her sainthood and her personhood. She was a mother, wife, daughter, and friend. The saints in my life as a part of this and other churches are your husbands, wives, children, friends. You know maybe better than others that they are not saints; certainly, they were imperfect! Yet in their faithfulness, they have left legacies of faith that we are blessings to all of us.

This Sunday in worship, we will read John 11:17-37 and see Jesus’s human grief alongside the powerful reality of the resurrection. We will honor all of the saints who have passed on in the past year (don’t forget your bell!) and consider the legacy we can leave together too.

We may not be authors, formally-sainted people, and those we love and miss may not be either. But Rachel’s words ring true. Our faith is held and encouraged by the saints, and we, too, have the opportunity to be that saint to other people.

Thanks be to God for this opportunity and this legacy.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Allee

Posted by Allee Willcox with

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