Pastor's E-Letter

Pastor's E-Letter

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Showing items filed under “Annette Stiles Pendergrass”

The Grace of Connection

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep”
-Romans 12:15

During the last week of my renewal leave, I spent 3 days with my clergy covenant sisters in St. Augustine. It was the first time we had been on retreat together since the Fall of 2019. Since that time, two of our group retired from formal ministry and one of us got married. We had so much to celebrate together!

Many of you may remember Pastor Terri Hill talking about this group in the past. The 5 of us, all clergywomen in the Florida Conference of the UMC, have been sharing life, ministry, and relationship for at least 27 years. I say at least because several of them started meeting before I joined the group. When we began meeting, we all had young children. Now, all our children are grown, and several have grandchildren.

Throughout these years, we have met for an in-person retreat at least twice a year, as well as gathering whenever we could at various conference events throughout the year. Our goal was to love, care for, and support one another in every facet of our lives, especially ministry, and we have certainly achieved that goal.

It’s hard to believe all that we have shared over the years. Life and love. Parenting and grandparenting. Now we are all in the stage of caring for aging parents. Through it all, we have always been united in our passion and love for the church of Jesus Christ. We have learned together and from one another. We have challenged one another and consoled each other. We have wept together and sometimes laughed so hard that we cried. We have experienced seasons of joy, excitement, growth, and abundance. And we have been through seasons of pain, disappointment, struggle, and heartbreak. The gift of all of it has been that we have never been alone. Again and again, we have been the compassionate heart of Jesus for one another. In short, we have put into practice the words of Paul in Romans 12, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

These relationships have blessed me more than I can ever put into words. They have given me strength and hope when, at times, those things felt in short supply. I can honestly say that for all these years, every time I’ve left one of our gatherings, I’ve driven away with a renewed sense of joy, peace, hope, and gratitude for the life I get to live and to share with these sisters in Christ. They are my people.

We all need people! We need the grace of living in connection with others, in deep, strong bonds of relationship where we know we are loved, cared for, supported, and encouraged. We are not created to live in isolation. All of us need that human-to-human, soul-to-soul connection of relationships and all of us need to be rooted in a community that we can trust will care for us when we need it most.

All of which is why our Connect & Care mission-essential at Suntree UMC is so important. It is a mission-essential that emerges out of the loving, caring heart of Christ, who truly “saw” people, and in seeing them, responded with a heart of deep compassion. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, and gave hope to the hopeless. His deep compassion moved him, again and again, to respond to human suffering and need.

This week in worship, we will be reflecting on the compassion of Christ that we see reflected throughout scripture but particularly in Matthew 9:18-26, 35-38. We will be asking ourselves how we, the church, as Christ’s body on earth, reflect the compassionate heart and love of Christ to our neighbors? What are the ways we are called to offer relational connection, care, support, and encouragement to one another and to folks in our community, as a reflection of the compassion of Christ? Are our hearts moved by the suffering of others, whether they are in our local hospitals suffering from COVID-19, or healthcare workers laboring under the strain of this ongoing pandemic, or across the globe, in Haiti or Afghanistan? And if we are moved with such compassion, how can we respond with loving action?

Who are your people? How have you experienced connection and care through the ministry of Suntree UMC? How is Christ calling us to deepen our empathy and compassion for the people around us every day? I pray you will begin now to ponder and pray over these questions and that you will join us for worship this Sunday, in-person or online, where we will invite the Holy Spirit to empower us to live as people moved by the compassion of Christ to connect and care for one another.

When the Mountains Move Us

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” Psalm 19:1-4

Magnificent. Glorious. Majestic. It is hard to find the words that can truly describe the beauty, majesty, and wonder of the world that God created and continues to create. As Scott and I made our way from Colorado to Utah, to Wyoming, everywhere we looked were sights that took our breath away. One day we found ourselves hiking along a river in a canyon just outside of Denver. With the city just a mile away, the only sound we heard was the sound of the water rushing along the creek bed. Another day we would find ourselves hiking through the vast desert landscape of Arches National Park, dotted with mammoth red and orange rock formations created over thousands of years. It was there that I thought of Elijah when he fled to Mount Horeb and how, after days of rest and recovery, he stood outside the entrance to the cave waiting for the Lord to pass by and heard “the sound of sheer silence.” I remember getting out of the car at Grand Teton National Park and taking in the panorama of mountains before me and just weeping at their beauty. Then there was Yellowstone, with its astounding array of ecological diversity – everything from mountains to canyons, rivers, lakes, geysers, mud pots, travertine terraces, vast fields of wildflowers, and my personal favorite, the wildlife. 

 

With every view, I was taken out of my small, narrow, world of worry and stress and invited to dwell once again in the bigger picture of God’s incredible work and presence in the world. At every turn, I was reminded of the vastness and goodness of God’s creation and the power and majesty of God to which these majestic scenes point, which is what the Psalmist describes in Psalm 19. I thought also of Psalm 8, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” 

 

I began to let go of so much that I was carrying: burdens, stress, anxiety, hurts, disappointments. I began to dwell more in the deep goodness, beauty, and grace of life and the created world. And my heart was turned to wonder, to praise, and to worship of the God who made it all, holds it all, carries it all, (and without my help, I might add) and yet still cares for and walks with me, with all of us. How amazing is that? 

 

For me, moments such as those described here, naturally move me to worship. They move my focus away from me and toward the God of the universe who created heaven and earth, you and me, and sustains it all in love. This Sunday in worship we will be thinking about the importance of worship as a spiritual practice that first and foremost seeks to honor and praise God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all. Worship invites us to recenter our hearts and minds on the transcendence and greatness of God. At the same time, it shapes our hearts personally and it shapes us as a community that more clearly reflects the life and heart of Christ for our community. We are made for worship, and I believe we need worship so that our restless hearts can find our rest in the Triune God. 

 

I hope you will plan to join us in worship this Sunday, whether in person or online – where we will offer ourselves in worship to God and reflect on the power of that corporate action to lift our eyes to God, broaden our perspective and shape our hearts to conform more to the heart of Jesus. 

 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Annette

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