Callie, my thirteen year old, just plopped down in the chair across from me at our patio picnic table and said, “Can you believe 2018 was six years ago?”
Reader, I do not know what inspired this observation, but I also cannot quite get my head around the truth of her statement.
It’s become almost commonplace to shrug our shoulders and admit that time doesn’t have quite the same meaning since Covid-19 first swept through the United States and across the globe; there was before, we note, and there was some vague amount of time after, and there is next Tuesday. Many of us are more wary about making plans for the future in this new sense of reality. We give thanks for each day, but also feel them blending together. It’s even stranger for our kids, who spent a proportionally much longer chunk of their lives online, wearing masks, watching the world change.
If you’ve been in service lately, you might have noticed the return of a familiar (though very bearded!) face in the rows: somehow, nine months have passed since Andy Bachmann retired from ministry at UCG. In the covenant we all adopted on his retirement, we agreed that – barring some circumstances in which we were just onboarding a third minister – he could resume participation in the life of UCG at this point. (Though that does not mean we have free reign to ask him to lead or participate in all the things!)
Even more incredibly, we’re just days away from the 4th anniversary of the day that the UCG campus shut down to do our part to flatten the curve. Four years! On Sunday, February 25th, Talia celebrated her 17th ordination anniversary! Seventeen years of the Reverend Talia Raymond, thanks be to God. A month earlier, January 4th brought the 50 year anniversary of Larry and Sandy Reimer’s arrival in Gainesville. 50 years of Reimers! As Larry noted, “It’s been a wild and adventurous ride ever since.”
Next year, 2025, will mark the 60th anniversary of UCG’s founding. We do not intend to let that auspicious occasion pass by uncelebrated and are just beginning to reflect on how we can gather memories and stories of who this church has been, even as we continue to imagine who we might be for the next sixty years.
The passing of time is a mysterious thing: constant and consistent, and yet experienced in so many ways. The lecture that lasts forever, the period of loneliness and grief, the days and seasons of love and joy that continue to unfold.
This has been a season of many transitions, a legislative and liturgical season of much grief: but we are called to remember that God, however known, is present through it all – shining on those moments of celebration and holding close in times of hardship. As it was in the beginning, the song goes, is now and ever shall be. God with us, God for us. Amen!
Grace and Peace,
Bromleigh