I remember stepping off of the train onto the platform, out of the station and into the city center, to the smell of cherry blossoms and adventure. It was the first time I had ventured out into something unplanned. It might’ve been tame; the manicured parks and neatly cobbled streets, but they were new and I hadn’t expected them.
It was 2000. I had just graduated from high school. I bought a plane ticket and a rail pass and left the country for the first time. From London I ventured west, from Heathrow, past Slough, Reading, Didcot, Swindon, down to Chippenham, then to Bath. It was the Cotswolds. It was tame, but it was new. My plan was to get lost.
I might’ve wandered those streets for hours looking at things that were new to me, but ancient to the world. The Roman baths took me aback. How many millennia had those columns stood around those bubbling springs and how many millennia had those springs bubbled before the columns were built? And me, in my 18 years, realized how new I was.
Every day, I wake up a Christian. I pray and assemble ancient columns around a spring that bubbled since before time. Even on those days when the structure isn’t completed, it is nonetheless begun. I am a part of something beyond myself — building something bigger than myself; something new and unexpected.
“Thy kingdom come,” I pray, “Thy will be done.” And where? On earth, just as it is in heaven. The reality is that even though I lug stone upon stone to the building site of the kingdom, the kingdom has been established. And not around the small bubbling springs, but in a vast and dangerous ocean of the gospel story. We are invited to let the wild waves of God’s glory in Jesus wash over us, wash us through and through, and land us not on the shore of a kingdom we are building, but on a kingdom already built — the shores of God’s new creation.
After a month of scaling back these "Words of Encouragement" from daily to weekly installments, we have decided to return the "Words of Encouragement" as a daily feature of our parish life. So many of us have felt connected to the new and unexpected things God is doing in our community by these updates and reflections. In the months ahead, you will hear from clergy, staff, and parishioners about the various ways God has shown up in this unexpected season.
We are excited to step out of the train and on to the platform with you to whatever God has in store.
Fr. Peter +
