What a week

I am the proud grandpa of my fifth grand child. My son and daughter-in-law gave birth to their third daughter Makenzie Grace on Wednesday of last week. Nancy and I have been busy with the other two grand daughters taking care of them and helping out where we could. Mom and daughter are doing fine.

This Sunday was also Pentecost Sunday. I had been contemplating what we can do to revamp our services. I wanted to work with the Praise Band to make the contemporary service more free flowing. Sunday was the first of those services. As with anything, there were some issues that need to be fine tuned but overall I believe the service went well. We will be working on this service throughout the summer. What we will likely do is continue this format from now on. For those who attended, feel free to give feedback as to ways that we might continue to develop this service.

I reflected on the "nevertheless" God. It was Peter Storey not Paul Storely who wrote about his time as the bishop of the United Methodist Church in South Africa. I was struck about what he had to say about the presence of the Holy Spirit in times that seem to defy whether or not God is present. Sometimes we want to have the manifest physical presence of the Spirit like what we read in Acts. What is hard is when difficult times are with us, to see what God is doing. The message to me is that even in hope unseen "nevertheless" God is there. We need to remain open to allowing the Spirit to become part of us and to continue to feed the Spirit through prayer, scripture, worship and sacraments, and with covenant groups.