Welcome Home!

Each homecoming looks and feels a bit different ~ the one that I share today unfolded a week ago, on Ash Wednesday.

Besides the 7:00 Worship Service, the church was open mid-day for folks who wanted to drop in for the imposition of ashes. One of the folks who stopped by told us that she had grown up in this church…so we spent a few minuets connecting the familial dots.

After our brief interaction, after I marked her brow with a sooty-cross, I concluded with, 'welcome home'.

As your Pastor, Ash Wednesday is a day {and an event} that has profound heart-impact on me. I experience it from a prophetic standpoint {speaking the truth of our mortality} as well as a pastoral one {speaking over and marking my beloved community}. To have the opportunity to meet and greet and include someone on this specific day was gift to me. As it turns out, I was not the only one for whom it was meaningful.

After she left Immanuel, this child-come-home turned to social media where one of you saw the post and passed the details back to me.

As is often the case, this particular homecoming had all sorts of grief and anxiety as attached baggage; which is to say, it was truly an act of holy courage that allowed this one to walk into Immanuel and submit to those ashes.

And she did.

Despite it all, she showed up. She dared. She shared.

Afterward, in her post, she confided that she had been blessed with words that she has longed her whole life to hear, 'welcome home'.

If you have never been here… if you haven't been here in a long time… let me be the first to declare, 'welcome home'!

Pastor Leah