Dear Friends,
November is always fast-paced and crammed with rapid transitions: All Saints’ Sunday with rejoicing that we are “all knit together in one communion and fellowship” … Ingathering Sunday on November 10 for the dedication of pledges as a resource for ministries as well as a weekend devoted to a celebration of beauty as sacred and a source of hope … November 17 which we are calling Mission Sunday to call to mind the joy of mission through what our visiting preacher Titus Presler calls “building companionship over boundaries of difference … Christ the King Sunday/Commitment Sunday with the culmination of the church year.
The underlying theme of thanksgiving is embedded in these Sundays as it is each week along with Thanksgiving Day, our national observance of gratitude. One element of thanksgiving distilled in these Sundays is the experience of living beyond ourselves. Praying, pledging, serving – these activities draw us beyond the boundaries we set for ourselves in our desire for personal security and self-determination.
So, we gather together to rejoice and give thanks for being grounded in our common prayer to fill our memories with the record of God’s mighty works, to enlighten our understanding with the light of the Holy Spirit, and to center the desires of our heart and in what God have us do.
I look forward to sharing this month with you and hope you will be at Trinity Church whenever you can.
Faithfully,
The Reverend Edward O. Miller, Jr.