Anticipate, Build, Grow, Create...

Dear Friends in Christ:

      Several years ago I received a marvelous New Year's card from Peter and Ann, friends of mine who lived here in East Aurora.  A spiral of words filled the center of the page, words like appreciate, anticipate, build, grow, create, care, challenge, listen, give, imagine, reflect, respect, share, see, speak, think, unite, delight, kindle, nurture, hope.

      I have thought of that card many times since then and some will recall that I mentioned it in the words that I wrote for The Apostle for my first January as your priest, January 2002. As I wrote then, “The spiraling words are about new beginnings, fresh starts and I believe they capture the spirit of what I hope is happening here as we begin working and worshipping together.”

      Five years later these words still speak to me of the promise of God’s new creation in us. We are, in the words of one of our prayers at Christmas, people whose hope is “in the Word made flesh.” We have seen God at work in wonderful ways during these past five years and, in spite of some setbacks along the way, I continue to see that spirit of hope and joy in our worship and work and life together. I also continue to believe something which was very important to me in my first year here:  Saint Matthias Church is not a problem to be solved. It is a wonderful gift to be appreciated and celebrated.

      2007 will present us – as all years do – with new challenges and I have evry confidence that we will, by God’s grace, meet those challenges. When I came here five years ago, I adopted as a personal motto some words from Psalm 126, “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Those words expressed for me the hope that I clung to as we began a journey together from a time of crisis to a time of joy. I believe that the time is now right for a new personal motto, one that I hope will speak to your hearts as well. It comes from the passage from the first chapter of the Gospel according to John that is read at Christmas: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” I believe that is there, in the reality of the Incarnation, that all our hopes must be grounded.

      I invite you to continue this wonderful journey of faith in this new year. We never know exactly where the journey will take us, but we have one another as companions on the way, and we travel in company with the One who is our brother and our Lord. Be assured that though the journey may be hard, it will not be dull. For, after all, God has great plans for us.

Your brother and priest,

Daniel