Life's Inconveniences

"If only the Lord had let us stay in Egypt!" Exodus 16:3

Dear People of St. David's,

I pray that you are well and let me say that I am so thankful to be back after a two week vacation. It's helpful for our bodies and soul to take a break from our regular lives. I feel refreshed and renewed in my faith, in my family, and in the mission and ministry of St. David's Church.

Now coming back to work or school after vacation, retreat, or break, is not always a comfortable thing to do, as many of you would agree. I will admit to a sense of feeling inconvenienced that I have to rise early again and get ready to be at St. David's and out in the community instead of sleeping in after staying up late to watch the Olympics for example.
But those everyday duties are not an inconvenience, just simply my life. Easy or hard, I love the life that God is calling me to live and will take the inconveniences as they come because they lead to more life.

I think that's part of the challenge many of us face in our daily lives and especially in our lives with God. We want our lives to go the way we want them to - and we want what we want. When circumstances press us or don't go the way we want them to go we sometimes allow our frustration to keep us from facing what's in front of us and we take an easier path - a path of convenience. That challenge causes a little of the whining we hear from the people of God in the quote at the top from Exodus. In this reading, the Israelites have just been rescued from hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, but want to return to it because their new life is not quite what they want it to be. It makes you want to ask, "Really? You'd choose slavery over trying to live a new life on the way to the Promised Land and a living relationship with God?" In their short-sightedness, the Israelites can't see that on the other side of their inconveniences there is always more life, a deeper sense of God's grace, and new horizons that we would not know without pressing on.

This coming week and this fall, we will experience a number of inconveniences at St. David's. The Fellowship Hall is closed so we can scrape the asbestos coating off the ceiling. It was put up decades ago and encapsulated to make the sound better and will be removed over a few weeks with a dustless, wet process that is entirely safe. Then, in September, when we have Fellowship Hall back, we will lose the lower level of the Chapel as we commence the first phase of construction for the Raising the Roof campaign. We will be inconvenienced and will have to modify our programs, but I am excited and convinced that it will help our entire community and make us a better church.

So smile when life becomes inconvenient. It may be the next step to ward more life.

Grace and Peace,
WFA