Newsletter Thoughts October 12th

Hello Friends,

Sunday, October 6th, I ran my 14th marathon in Minnesota. It was a beautiful course that took us from downtown Minneapolis, around lots of lakes, across the Mississippi River, and to the state capital in St. Paul. This was also my slowest marathon. I had an injury late August, followed by a case of Covid in early September. These meant that I missed the most important parts of training. My strategy on race day was to try and finish before the time limit… and that is basically what I did.

There are a couple lessons in this. First, a newer runner should never try this! And an experienced runner must listen to her body. Second, when things don’t work out the way you had hoped (like training problems), you have the ability to make the best of the situation, and change plans if needed.

I think that second lesson is great for life, and for churches. We all have things that we plan for, hope for, work towards, and dream about. We also experience that things don’t work out as we had hoped…even for the disciples!

But we don’t have to give up. Instead, we can change our plans, and if needed, change them and change them and change them.

On Sunday we had a budget workshop after worship. Last year we made some big changes, but still, we are not where we need to be. All this means is that we have the opportunity to make some changes.

Of course, the decisions for these changes are not easy, but I am confident that together we can make those hard decisions.

Peace in Christ,

Pastor Nancy