Our new home in Greensboro--just the right size








and a forest and a lake in the back yard...


I am currently on a plane from Seattle to San Jose, leaving a week of renewing relationships with family and friends from Shoreline and heading towards the 36th annual renewal of relationships at the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors’ Conference. I helped begin this conference all those years ago, although then it was called the West Coast Young Presbyterian Pastors’ Conference. But times do change…
They say you can’t go back. And I guess that is true. In fact I guess it is true about every day and every moment and every place and every relationship. The obvious reason for this is that in a sense we are new every moment—at least every day. Every day is its own new gift, its own new challenge, its own new door to walk through and opportunity or peril to face. And every day we bring the past into the present and make decisions and act on those decisions, and no matter what has happened before or who we have been up until that point, the new decisions and actions have their own profound impact on creating who we are at that new moment and who we will be in the new future. It is that intermixing of the past and the present that creates the now and the future. In the whole thing the only constant is God himself, and I assume that was what the author of Lamentations had in mind when he reminded himself, and us, of this: Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:21-23)

So, going back to Shoreline for the first time since leaving almost a year ago was not going back—it was going forward. It was going forward and building on what had been for twenty years—and on what has been during the last year. It was a time of celebrating and remembering and renewing and catching up and appreciating afresh what twenty years of life together had been, and also of what through the time apart it was becoming. It was a happy time of seeing good friends, of catching up on where God had led them, and at the same time it had sober moments of sharing grief over the losses that some had experienced in the time apart.

One of the great truths of the Christian faith is that when Paul talks about being one body in Christ he is describing an eternal and present reality: we are one. No matter what time or distance separates us, as believers we are together in life and ministry. Even though we are miles or perhaps even continents apart, as each of us continues to follow God’s leading and serve him, we are doing it together. In success and failure, in joy and sorrow, in exhilaration and in fear, we are one. And the work we did when together is continued just as it was when we were “together” when we are apart.

I have always felt that the true measure of the work of a minister is not what happens when that person is “on the job” but rather what is “left behind”, what goes on and grows on. And I celebrate the life and growth that I see in and through the people Nancy and I “left behind” when we left Calvin. I thank God for the faithfulness of his people, the interjection of new life and new ideas by new people, the love, laughter and tears that we can share, and the faithfulness of God.
In short, I thank God for the chance to go back and visit good friends and co-workers in God’s vineyard. I thank God for the chance to celebrate what was. I thank God for the chance to learn about and celebrate what has been since we left. And I thank God for his ongoing work that leads us into the future, a new future that is built on the past but that is truly new every morning… And above all I thank God for his faithfulness—every day, his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.