What will we remember?

Thank goodness, 2020 is nearly complete! As it winds down, what will you remember? What will your take-aways be?

Walking through downtown Silverton, it is impossible to miss the businesses that have been closed because of Covid or during Covid. 

In one closed-store-window is a display: Christmas gifts, lights, ornaments and toilet paper. Yup, this was the year that there was not only a run on grocery stores, but toilet paper was a key objective as people cleared off the shelves. I wonder if there will be folks who won't need to restore their tp supply until summer.

Of course, 2020 was the year of the mask. And the quibble to wear or not to wear…individuality up against communal benefits. Will those same wrestling matches reoccur over to vaccinate or not to vaccinate? We will have to wait for 2021 to reveal that chapter of the story.

Open and bleeding racial wounds also took center stage this year. Part of the original sin of our country, how people of color are seen or not seen, presumed upon, marginalized, violated ~ perhaps because Covid has suspended so many other things, our attention span was expanded. While there will be no quick fixes to the institutionalized racism that is our truth, I pray that we listen better to people who are other from us ~ listen and hear and honor.

At church several projects were started and completed without having to shuffle people and times and dates, since few if any folks were actually using the building. That seemed a huge Covid victory, until the great flood on the patio, which became the great flood into the Fireside Room and Narthex. When the church on the hill floods, you know that it is the year of calamity!

Also at church, worship. This is where I say, it was entirely the same only completely different.

Because of the foresight and skills of Keith Amano and Peter Allen, Immanuel never skipped a beat. With less than a day to convert, they managed. On our first Sunday of Covid, it was simply Keith, Pastor Manuel and myself. But by Wednesday {it was Lent, after all} we added music. Our second Sunday of Covid we had a worship team and from there we have moved though almost an entire Church Year; January 3^rd will be the 43^rd week of this odd-new-normal.

Livestream worship is not the same as it was in person. As your Pastor, as an extravert who is energized by people and relationships, I get it! But I also know that our work of speaking the radical Good News of God's love, grace, mercy and forgiveness has been broadcast to an audience well beyond our wonderful village. That is a God-sized victory.

Friends, what will we remember? Masks. Toilet paper. Brokenness. Fires. Evacuations. When you make your own list, remember a God with us through it all.

Pastor Leah