Over Labor Day weekend I was able to spend some time with my friend Ruth Ann as we celebrated 50 years of friendship together by taking a trip to Nashville, IN to enjoy the beauty of the small town, do a little shopping in the quaint and unusual shops along their main street and just be together to strengthen, renew, and celebrate friendship. Ruth Ann and I met on the first day of kindergarten traveling on the bus to Ready Elementary School in Griffith, IN and have been great friends ever since. We managed to spend lots of time together during our elementary and high school years, but not as much time as we entered college and went our separate ways; her to Purdue University and me to the University of Michigan. Yet even when the miles between us have been great, we have always managed to connect through phone conversations, email, visits to one another and now even on Facebook. It’s hasn’t necessarily always been easy; both of us have been busy with raising our families, holding down full time jobs, maintaining our homes; all of those things that can leave little time for friendships when the children are young. However, somehow we always managed to be there for the important things for one another; weddings, anniversaries, funerals of parents and other family members, bridal showers, baby showers, christenings, baptisms, ect. I suppose we made those events a priority to attend. I can’t help but think that our willingness to be there for one another throughout the years has contributed to a loving, grace filled, fun, and altogether solid friendship that we both value and count on.

            Ruth Ann and I have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with one another because we have been willing to invest the time and energy it takes to maintain a healthy relationship. I doubt that I’m telling any of you anything new when I say that any good, solid relationships take time, energy, and even at times, sacrifice. The same kind of principles apply when it comes to connecting to and having a relationship with Jesus Christ. It takes time, energy, and sacrifice to have a good, solid, healthy relationship with our Savior. Jesus is always available to us and always ready to hear our prayers, accept our worship, empower our knowledge, give us the energy and heart to reach out to others with God’s love, hold us accountable, offer us grace, love, and forgiveness. If we feel far from God; it’s probably not God who moved.

            What do you need to do to move closer to Jesus? Pray? Come to worship? Go to Sunday School? Read your Bible? Engage in an act of kindness and or love for your neighbor? Ask for forgiveness, accept God’s love, live a life of grace and mercy?

            Relationships are important. Our relationship with Christ is the most important relationship in our lives. Christ is waiting for you. Will you accept his offer of deep, meaningful, solid, life giving relationship?

 

           

                                                                                               

This past week I started a 12 week training cycle for the Indianapolis Monumental ½ Marathon.

I stepped out the door this morning to a beautiful, crisp, late summer pre-dawn morning. The sun

wasn’t quite up yet, the Centerville school buses had not left their evening and weekend parking

lot places, there was little traffic on the road, and the quiet and gentle morning touched my soul

as my feet pounded the pavement each step of my run. I run one long run during each week of

my training; this morning’s long run was quite short in comparison to what is coming up over the

next few weeks but it was still a challenging run. I’ve trained for a few half marathons over the

 last 14 years and I know that hardest runs of this training cycle are yet to come. The discipline

of the training, the quiet of the morning runs, and the pay off of good health make each of these

runs a blessing in the midst of the early morning wake up calls and the huffing and puffing as I

 try and increase my distance and speed for the race in November.

Why do I do all of this training? Well, the obvious reasons are to maintain and improve my

health, a reason to get some exercise, (which is good for stress management and who doesn’t

need help with stress management these days?) and to satisfy a little bit of that somewhat

compulsive personality of mine. But, I also love to see that finish line at the end of the race. No

 matter how well or how mediocre or how awful I might run any particular race, the finish line

tells me that I’ve persevered in my training, persevered in the race, persevered in this area of my

life. And that has all sorts of implications about how I might persevere in life in general and most

 importantly, how I persevere in this life of faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that our spiritual life is a lot like training for a half

marathon running race. Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us “And let us run with perseverance the race

marked out for us,  fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Our life of faith

and hope in Christ is like a race; a race in which training, discipline, and hope keeps us in the

race despite the long distance we run. We realize that it’s not always going to be easy, but

keep our eyes on the finish line, and in the midst of it all, feel,  hear, and see the soft, beautiful

mornings of our faith run. Most importantly throughout our “runs”, “we fix our eyes on Jesus, the

pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

 May we all have blessings on our “run” with Christ!

 

 

 

!

It's really a lot of fun to have a three year old around the house......

Especially when they are enjoying their raspberry ice cream!

Sermonizing.....

What a joy it is to sit on the back porch at the Centerville UMC parsonage this evening and spend a little time in sermon preparation outside. It's not often that I have the time or even the inclination to work on a sermon in the evening, but this week has been quite full with "people time" during the day. No opportunity has opened to sit at my desk at the church office for the study, meditation, and writing that needs to happen to preach a sermon on Sunday morning. So, here I sit on my not so comfy lawn chair on the porch, listening to the birds, the lawnmowers, the chain saws, the traffic, and apparently a leaf blower (at least that's what it sounds like) in the distance as I enjoy this incredibly beautiful June evening.

My trusty Labrador Retriever, Murphy, has already given up on sitting outside and is resting quietly (yes, crazy dog Murphy is being quiet!) in the house waiting for me to come in and give him a dog cookie.

It's good to sit in the middle of God's creation even in the midst of all the human noise. It's good to do a little bit of relaxation time after a busy day with our new summer morning Bible Study, lunch with 31 church members and friends, (yes, that's right - there were 31 of us at our Wednesday "Stucky" lunch today) a meeting with Centerville UMC's FCJ coach, and then sermon prep time. It's good to know that life is relatively peaceful at this point and my family and friends are doing pretty well - at least as far as I know right now this very instant - but mostly, it's good to know that God is with me (and you!) in, on, around, and amidst this journey of life and faith.

Blessings to any and all who read this on this soft, warm, and lovely June evening. And to God this evening..........thank you....simply, thank you!

An update

Greetings from Burkina Faso! It's Tuesday evening here in the mission house and many of us are getting packed to head back out to the bush tomorrow for our final adventure -a safari! Not sure what we will see and experience there, but I'm guessing maybe a few elephants, baboons, and crocodiles. First we go to Tabitha House; a place of empowerment for Burkino women. We plan to visit the facility, meet the women and children and cheer on Dee Dee Sterling as she encourages, teaches, and cares for the women who come to learn and grow in self confidence, marketable skills, and in Christ.

I'll have more to say in the coming days and weeks about our time in Burkino Faso and will be posting many, many pictures along the way. There is great physical, emotional, and spiritual need here and yet the people have the most beautiful smiles and greetings in their hearts and spirits. We have been the recipients of amazing hospitality, warmth, and gratitude along the way. The children here are beautiful, precious, loving, and oh my goodness, do they love to have their pictures taken! And believe me, folks, your gifts for clean water in Burkina Faso is needed, appreciated, and welcomed in ways you might never imagined! I hope I can communicate in some way the enormous gratitude and love expressed to the team for the gifts of clean water and the wells that are being dug.

More stories as time goes forward. Blessings to each one of you!

In Christ's love, Kathy

Packing...

As I continue to blog about our trip to the Holy Land, please know that I'm leaving for Burkina Faso, Africa from O'Hare tomorrow afternoon. I hope to continue to blog daily, but expect that my access to internet access will be spotty over the next 2 weeks and my blogs might not be as regular as I would like. That being said, this morning I'd like to post a few thoughts and pictures about our second day in the Galilee Sea area in Israel.
We began our day on a boat traveling over the sea of Galilee! And a wonderful day it was! The sun was brilliant in the sky with no clouds to be seen, the breeze fresh, clear and warm, the people joyous, the doves surrounding the boat beautiful, the fisherman who cast his net over the side of the boat rugged and skilled, the music was a little canned, and Bishop Mike's meditation on our trip across the sea was "spot on." On this day, we "sailed in the boat with Jesus"!
We then hopped back on the bus and headed to Caesaria Philippi in the far north part of Israel (a place we were not able to get to when I went to the Holy Land in 2007) the place where Peter affirmed Jesus as Messiah, "You are the Christ!" and Christianity began. Beautiful! We then hopped back in the bus, headed back to the Sea of Galilee and visited the site of an ancient Galilean fishing boat one much like the one that Jesus and his disciples would have used. We then traveled to Nazareth to the Church of the Annunciation.
We ended our day at the Mount of Precipice which is believed to be the site of Jesus rejection from his people after his teaching, recorded in Luke 4.

¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”^[f]

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

²² All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³ Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴ “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷ And there were many in Israel with leprosy^[g] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

It was a great day!

Back home again in Indiana

First of all, let me apologize for not updating more consistantly as the Holy Land trip continued after my last blog on February 8th. My preferred style would have been to blog each day but somehow my time and energy got pulled into other directions and I wasn't able to accomplish what I set out to do. In light of that reality, I hope to blog about our fantastic trip to the Holy Land over the next two or three days as I catch up here at home, at the church, and prepare for my next adventure to Burkina Faso, Africa.

Our group of seven from the Centerville/Richmond area combined with 141 United Methodists from the state of Indiana (give or take a few from other states and denominations). Our group was hosted by Bishop Mike Coyner and his wife Marsha; both of them providing faithful, friendly, and spiritual leadership throughout our trip together. It was a fabulous trip filled with the sights and sounds of the places of Jesus' birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection. I was absolutely thrilled to be able to share the trip with our seven Holy Land pilgrims and other friends, old and new, as we journeyed together in the area of the Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and many other places in the country of Israel. Our guide, Halel, was wonderful! A life long Jew, Halel was born in the great state of Ohio and moved to Jerusalem when he was 26. His knowledge of US culture and being a native speaker of American English, plus his 40 years of living in Israel and incredible knowledge about Jesus, New and Old Testament scripture, and the history of the areas we explored all combined in a very, very unique and satisfiying way for the people he served on the "Gray Bus." Not only did his communication skills excel on so many different levels to us folks from the US, he was a genuine "people person", possesed an engaging, self deprecating, and "wickedly" funny sense of humor, and was able to sense the needs and wants of the people he served. My trip was enriched by his presence and knowledge and I heard from the others on the trip that their appreciation for Halel matched or exceeded mine.

We spent the 1st day in the Sea of Galilee area visiting the Mount of Beatitudes, the site of the multiplication of loaves and fishes (called Tabtha), exploring Peter's Primacy (the place Jesus, after his resurrection, asked Peter three times, "do you love me?"), Capernum, Beit She'an, (a city of ancient ruins in the northern porion of Israel), and then we traveled back to the River Jordan for a service of batismal remembrance lead by Bishop Coyner. Enjoy pictures from our day!

Holy Land Day 2

We are still in the Sea of Galilee area and just got off of the boat that took us across the seat. Beautiful day with bright sunshine and light waves! Bishop Coyner spoke of the storms of life and the peace that Jesus  offers us. I took pictures from my camera on the boat (I didn't want my iPad to get wet!), so I don't have pictures from the boat to post, however I hope to post a couple of pics taken from my iPad this morning.
We are now on the bus riding through the galilee area exploring Old Testament sites, places that Jesus walked and ministered, and general enjoying the tremendous knowledge of our guide and one another. Bishop Coyner and his wife Marsha are on the bus this morning, so we all have to be good Methodists!

I hope to post more later. Blessings from our group from Centerville UMC!!

Holy land

A very short update tonight....a great day in the Sea of Galilee area! Hopefully I can get more online time as the week moves forward....right now it is pretty limited. Blessings to all!