Weekly STAR Reflection 6-14-2020

For many of us – or at least for me – these days of physical distancing feel like a holding pattern. We know that we can’t return to life as it was before March 15. And we don’t yet know what life will look like when the pandemic is behind us – and we surely don’t know when that will be. We’re in the middle of the story and it is still being written.

As businesses reopen and we start connecting with others in three dimensions, we know that we need to establish ways of interacting and being together that keep us as safe as possible. Wearing masks, keeping our distance, limiting the size of our gatherings, keeping hand sanitizer readily available, refraining from hugs and handshakes and sharing food and singing…these practices will ensure our health and safety and we hope, that of the most vulnerable among us, but they also mean that our patterns of daily life will look vastly different. And that means our way of being church will look vastly different, too.

The state has issued very, very detailed guidance about how and when we gather physically. But we turn to God’s Word for guidance about how to be faithful – how to follow Jesus – in this time and place.

So, our worship for the summer will not be based on the lectionary. For the next four weeks, we are diving into the book of Acts, which recounts the story of the early church – its formation and struggles as the earliest disciples sought to faithfully follow the risen Christ. Pastor Amy and I trust that Scripture will ground us in who we are and how we are called to live as we write the story of what the future looks like–for God’s people, for God’s church and for the world God so loves. Grounded in Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the story of God’s love, grace, mercy and justice will be told in the next chapter of our life together.