The building won't look finished when we move in.
Anyone moving into a new home usually wants to start decorating: picking out
curtains for the windows, paintings to hang on the walls, rugs for the floor.
It's all part of making a house a home, I suppose, part of making it your own.
We'll be tempted to do the same thing when we move into our new church home.
To some of you, it will look like there's a lot of empty space to fill - the
wall behind the altar table, perhaps, or above the water, or that empty cupboard
above the kitchen sink. Maybe, too, you have the perfect piece to fill that
space: that plaque of the Ten Commandments your Aunt Alice gave you for Confirmation,
that statue of praying hands you never really knew what to do with. Those begonias
that'll look just right around the light poles in the parking lot.
Let's not do that.
Before we begin to decorate our new church home, we need to live in it, work
in it, worship in it, eat in it, play in it. We need to take a while to get
used to how the building and grounds work, and what it needs to make them work.
Church Council will also need to figure out a process, a way to build
consensus, a set of standards to help define what goes where. We've never done
this before - it'll take us a little time to figure it out.
So be patient, my friends. Let yourself get used to the simplicity of Good Shepherd's
new home, inside and outside. There's plenty of work to do just welcoming the
stranger, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned, glorifying
the God who made our new home possible. We can wait a bit to decorate.
Pastor Jim
I will sing a new song to you, O God. Psalm 144:9
From the Shepherd's Song Newsletter -- September 2009
Copyright 2009 by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
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E-mail your comments and questions to Pastor Jim in care of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at good.shep-holland@sbcglobalnet.