Last week as I wandered around our Vacation Bible School, including the field trip portion to the Urban Gardening Center, I witnessed the coming together of children and their staff that crossed many lines of ethnicity, ability/disability, age and interest. The love of youth and adult staffers was palpable. Are these signs of the reign of God in our midst?
At the closing of one of the morning sessions a tall confident woman with a daughter in VBS came up to me. She had the look of rediscovery, a wide smile pasted across her face.
"Tim?" she entreated me, but I could only recognize a face I knew from another time and place. She continued, "It's been thirty years ..." My mind traced its way back to an earlier time and place. "I'm Jennifer, the daughter of Jack and Barbara Farris." Then it all came back. They were a very active family in my first church out of seminary. Indeed the years had passed. The young girl had grown and become a mother herself. I had baptized both her and her father.
As the big wheel of life turns she and her family had moved to Columbia. They live minutes from the church. Though the years change us they also do not. Some things remain, like faith, hope and love, these three. It has been said that of these love is the greatest. I have come to know just how true that is.
