Happy Easter!

ALLELUIA, HE IS RISEN!

   (Okay, I know it’s only Saturday, but I also know most of you will actually be reading this on Sunday, so just go with it!)

This week Jeff started work on the first stage of the upper campus library remodeling project: the indoor garden. He rounded off the outside corner of the room with a low retaining wall. Next, he went rock hunting for the facing. We have spent a few hours today (Saturday) putting together the jigsaw puzzle of stones and cement across the front of the wall, and Sunday afternoon we will do the top of the wall. Here is a picture of the corner before the wall:

The wall itself is supported by bricks and cement:

And here is the stone facing in progress:

           

This got us to thinking about the jigsaw puzzle of life, if you will, about how we each have a place in the world and in church. Just as the lives of your family and co-workers would be vastly different without you, a church is a puzzle made up of all the jigsaw pieces inside, and each one makes church a bit different from the others. Each person, young, middle, or old, married or single, man or woman, working, student or retired; no matter how we label ourselves, we all have an important place in church. Without all the pieces, the puzzle is incomplete. If we take the image one step further and imagine a three-dimensional puzzle (such as our retaining wall!), then a missing piece may cause the whole puzzle to fall, or fail. In our wall, there are large stones, small stones, even tiny chips of rock. The entire whole makes a wall, but separately, they are just rocks. Some of them are quite insignificant rocks. Their importance comes from their participation in community, in something greater than themselves, and something that serves others (in the case of some of the rocks, they support the entire structure!) Seems like a great way of describing the mission of church, both internally among ourselves and externally to the world. Our challenge as people of God, and as church, is to find where our piece fits in the puzzle. Whether this is through a formal discernment process, such as the one Jeff is entering, or an informal personal journey, such as the one that led us here to Bolivia, or something in between, is up to you and your circumstances.

It is my hope for you that this week has offered you an opportunity to reflect upon your place in the puzzle, whatever your puzzle is. Share that journey with those around you if you can – after all, they are parts of your puzzle and you are part of theirs…

Happy Easter to all~

Susan

PS – For those of you who wonder why I did not use the word ‘the’ in front of ‘church’ in my post, I wanted to distinguish between the church building and the people who are “church”. Hopefully this explanation helps!