Wisconsin
Conference UCC
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February 26, 2008 To:
Clergy in the Wisconsin Conference “Bending
Toward Spring” Dear
Colleagues, Greetings
and grace to you in the spirit of Christ whose journey through these Lenten days
encourages our journeys in faith and discipleship. I greet you warmly from
Well,
the day before I left to come out here, February 20, it was minus 15 degrees in It
sounds a little like what the scriptures say when they speak of the Winter
is a bit like that. The ‘turn’, indeed, has come. There is now
movement toward Spring, even if the signs are uneven; when we despair; when we
can’t see the signs, because they are hidden under that mountain of snow along
the driveway. There are witnesses even now who encourage us to see the
signs and to hope, even amid the continuing cold and the evidence of winter’s
persistence and tenacity. There
are signs. In the past two weeks I can’t tell you how many times people
have said, “Have you heard the cardinals? They’re singing.”
I’ve heard their clear and lovely voices every day. They’ve been
largely silent for two months, but they’re singing their hearts out now.
They see something we don’t. They are feeling the signs that are eluding
the rest of us. I’m encouraged. I need their song. At
times we need to have others see early signs and sing songs on our behalf.
Proclaim that which is promised but not yet obvious, but visible to the eyes of
faith. Our bedroom has an east wall with an 8 foot patio door. It provides us with lessons in astronomy and also hints of the function of faith. At the deepest days of winter, the sunrise is so far off to the south, that it isn’t visible. Just in the past week, it has shown itself, shining in our eyes. The light is coming; making progress; pushing back the dark, day by day. Lighting. Warming. Melting. Nourishing hope. Martin
Luther King has a wonderful way of saying it: “When
our days become dreary, with long hovering clouds of despair, and when nights
become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a
creative force in this universe working to pull down mountains of evil, a power
that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into
bright tomorrows. The arc of the moral
universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Witnessing.
Bending the trajectory of a season, a calendar season or a moral season; bending
the seasons of our lives toward justice and toward hope. The meantime, the
time between, is where we live and where the Church fulfills its role. We
are to believe so strongly in God’s love and in the defining, transforming
particularity of Christ, that we see signs very early; signs that change is
coming. Then we sing it on behalf of a dark and cold humanity. We
are a voice, proclaiming dawn to a benighted world. The light creeps
across the horizon from the south. A minute and a half a day or so.
It is hardly visible from day to day, but a week, a month, you can see it.
You can tell. The
Church is the voice that is bold to speak of what it knows, even before all the
evidence is in. It sees hidden truths of the moral universe and it sings,
says, shows the way toward a springtime of promise. There trajectory may
be long, but there is a bending in nature and in history, and it promises to be
toward justice, toward hope, toward Easter. Bless you for your witness of hope. Your
colleague, David
Moyer |
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Wisconsin Conference UCC |
Welcome
from our Wisconsin Conference Minister
4459 Gray Rd.