| Dear Friends, As September begins, we look forward to this Sunday, our Kick-Off Sunday when Sunday School and Sunday Circle (Youth Group) start. Pieces of the service that comprise our worship, the liturgy, change Sunday to mark the move into what we call the “program year,” which loosely follows the school year, September – May. We start this program year in familiar and in new ways. Not since 2019, have we been able to look ahead and gather with the excitement as we can this year! And, with this start we introduce the streaming of our worship with permanent equipment. We could not have even imagined that as a possibility in 2019. On the 18th we begin Sunday Sing, a middle-school through adult pre-service activity when we can gather as friends and family to learn about singing and the service music. It promises to be much fun just as the restart of Joyful Noise, the children’s choir after worship. I am your new rector; we are new to each other. This is our first entry into a program year together! We may be new to one another and we are getting to know each other. As we do, psalm 139, perhaps the most intimate psalm in our scripture, reminds us that as we get to know each other, God has already searched us out and knows us. God knows us as individuals and as a community. The form of the Hebrew word “to know” used here in this first verse of the psalm is the only time it is used in scripture and indicates a kind of striving and intentionality that matches the Hebrew “to search.” The Hebrew for searchapplies to what we humans do. It could be used to describe the search a friend and I did for the perfect picnic spot at the Sting concert this past weekend. It could mean what we do to discover and reimagine who we are as church, informed by whose we are as beloved of God, the One who knows us through and through. Trusting in God’s knowledge and love for us, let’s deepen who we are together and experience together the good God intends for us and the world! |
| In Peace, Dina+ |