“Providing a Home”

by Pastor Wade

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.”                                                      2 Corinthians 1:3-4

 

We were finishing our lunch and coffee – Chuck Standahl and I – at a recent funeral held at First Lutheran.  (You probably know Chuck as a long-time member of this community and one of the funeral directors at West Kjos Funeral Home.)  Across from us sat one of the daughters of the woman we had just trusted to our Lord’s keeping and three of her childhood friends. She and her sister had traveled from opposite ends of the country (one in Maine, one in Montana) to be here for their mother’s funeral and her friends had gathered around her.  Now the four of them lunched together and told stories of growing up on the same street and in the same neighborhood and of parents and fresh baked cookies and school times shared together and and things they got away with without their parents knowing (or thought they did).

I think it was somewhere in the midst of this that Chuck turned to me and said, “I feel like we are sitting in on a screening of “The View.”  I don’t regularly watch “The View” and don’t know a lot about it, but the image fit. Four women sat at table sharing a bite of food and a bit of coffee and talking about all kinds of happenings in their lives. They reconnected memories and laughed, corrected errors in stories and assigned rightful responsibility (or blame) and laughed some more.  This fit my image of “The View” but also spoke to me in a larger way of one of the ministries of this congregation.

As I watched this conversation and shared in some of it, I experienced four friends caring for and comforting each other as they remembered life together and remembered some of the losses of their lives – losses of parents and loved ones and losses of friendships and dreams. I heard them connect their stories to God’s story and growing up in the church and being in Sunday School together and singing in the Children’s Christmas Program held at the High School.  And I had the sense that somehow – at least for this afternoon – First Lutheran was providing a “landing place,” and a “homecoming” for God’s scattered children.  Here was a place to come and to remember, and a place to encourage and be encouraged by each other and by the Spirit of Christ that moves through the people of this place.

Watching and listening, I silently gave thanks for you, who in so many unseen ways offer the hospitality of “place” in which grieving ones may gather.  I gave thanks for Elyda and Marilyn and Twylla (and others) who plan and lead…and for those of you who show up to serve or to do dishes or who bring one more pan of bars…and for those who will follow in their footsteps. (Yes, we need you for this somewhat quiet, behind the scenes, ministry of hospitality and healing! Please let Tanzy know how the Spirit is calling you!)

“The View” from where I sat was of the Church being the Church and “consoling as they have been consoled”: friends gathering to embrace friends and others gathering simply to serve, because Christ has first embraced and served us.

 

Following with you,

 

Pastor Wade

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