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“Leave all things you have and come and follow me.” from the hymn, The Two Fishermen.
I’m not a good student of the Bible. I wasn’t sure I could be helpful when Barbara asked me to share some thoughts on New Chapters in Location, but here are a few ideas that come to mind when I reflect on our plans to move from Peachtree City to Wisconsin.
A few weeks ago, the COS choir sang “The Two Fishermen.” Whatever we sing in church usually sticks with me for several days. We repeated the chorus many times: “Leave all things you have and come and follow me.” Karl and I plan to move closer to our daughters and grandchildren in a couple of years and this decision is what Barbara asked me to write about. We do plan to take some things with us, but there will be much that we leave behind.
I won’t say that our decision to change our home to a new location is the same as a call from Jesus to follow him, but it will bring us closer to our family. I have a strong sense that God gave us this life to make the most of it and I feel we live our best lives when we love and care for our family. We also hope that this change in location will lead us to build new connections and experience the beauty in God’s world.
We will leave behind a network of friends and neighbors, collaborators in music and life. We’ve been in our Peachtree City home for over 30 years. We will have lots of cleaning out to do, plenty to leave behind. But it’s definitely our church family that will be the hardest to leave. Christ Our Shepherd is starting an exciting time of change. The sanctuary renewal will bring new inspiration to worship and enhance the beauty of musical offerings. Karl and I hope these changes will bring new leadership to the musical groups he started. When you leave a place, you open a space for others to come and work their own magic.
God our Father, during this time of Lent and the coming changes in all our lives, let us remember what Ecclesiastes says. "To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted: A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh: A time to mourn, And a time to dance: A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones: A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing." Amen.
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