Both yesterday and today I stood with families at Cerny Park as two classes of Agapè students “slid” into kindergarten by coming down a slide as part of their preschool graduation. It was lovely to celebrate this moment after such an unusual school year. Miss Jayne and Miss Konnie did such a wonderful job adapting to all the extra guidelines and safety protocols while still having lots of fun and providing a wonderful program for the students.
Looking ahead and thinking about the students that will be part of the four-year old Agapè class in the Fall, I couldn’t help but be struck by the fact that all of them were born the year I moved to Warrenville. I’ve often said, I don’t feel like time is passing until I see it represented in the growth of children as babies transform into toddlers and then go from preschoolers to pre-teens and teenagers seemingly overnight.
This month not only marks my four-year anniversary of having the honor and pleasure of pastoring Community Baptist Church, it’s been twenty years since I graduated high school and ten years since I graduated from graduate school. Milestone anniversaries that invite reflection and provide an opportunity to take stock.
Time is such a strange thing. It flies and crawls. It circles back and moves forward. It brings changes—some for the better and some for the worse. It can be wasted or well-spent, but it’s always a limited commodity.
The church is about to move into what we call Ordinary Time. This is basically the bulk of time that’s not Advent, Lent, or Eastertide. Last year, Ordinary Time was anything but ordinary as we navigated our way through Pandemic Time. This year, we’ll be marking time by Unraveling the Mysteries of faith and leaning into what Scripture often describes as the “fullness of time.” We’ll start this Sunday by delving into the mystery of the Trinity as Ordinary Time kicks off with Trinity Sunday.
I look forward to your company as we round the corner into year five of journeying together as the body of Christ.
In Love,
Pastor Annette