Weekly pandemic update from Mitch

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I pray that you are well and safe! This morning I had a great phone call with my friend and fellow parishioner Tom. The conversation was a blessing, as we shared feelings of fatigue around the pandemic, but also hope for the future. I remarked to Tom that I felt like we each needed to extend grace to each other because with so much going on in the world we each are operating at around 80 percent.

It’s hard to be 100 percent focused on one thing right now, especially with a pandemic looming over our heads and a news cycle that thrives on headlines meant to excite us. I was contemplating the difficulty of 2020 as I was preparing my report for our Annual Meeting. Like everything else this year, there has been some good, and there has been some bad, but I feel like God has been present for it all. When I look at it this way and I see the body of work St. Martin’s has accomplished, I smile. From continued mission projects like St. Luke's Feeding Ministry to forgiving medical debt to starting an ordination process for a member to publishing two newsletters a week to creating a new publication about members' faith journeys to online worship to creating a new way for people to go on pilgrimage together to the creation of a community garden and its sustained care, we have done a lot.

When I look at the year that we have faced, I see that while it has been hard, it has also pushed St. Martin’s to come together in new places and in new ways. I realized something else: if we have a joint purpose of loving and serving the Lord and we give what energy we can to that purpose, then even in a diminished capacity, we can accomplish a lot. Sure we may be operating at 80 percent, but all of us working at 80 percent is a lot more than most. With God blessing our work, 80 percent sure can go far, further in fact, then I ever imagined. Please join us this Sunday for our online worship. The sermon will be different, but I’d like to share with you where we have gone and where we are going.

In Christ,

Mitch+