“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” —Ecclesiastes 3:1
Dear Crossroads,
Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that for everything there is a season. In our calendar year, May and June are the season of transitions. School years end, students graduate, dorms, apartments, and houses get packed up. Trees and flowers (finally) start blooming. Summer arrives. We open lake houses and garden boxes and porches. This is the season of change.
I just watched the class of Carroll University students that I’ve walked with my entire time there graduate. The class of students I’ve known the whole three years of my time at Carroll. I watched them grow and mature from teenagers unsure of who they were or where they were headed to young adults, steadying their steps, confident of the next thing God called them to. They joked with me many times that I was graduating with them.
Watching them transform and be sent off as I myself am in a season of sending made me think about all the times in our lives we are “launched” by others and the times we ourselves do the “launching.” I find myself experiencing both at once. Launching students into their next stages, proud and hopeful for all to come for them, while also being launched into my own new phase of life.
You, too, Crossroads, are launching others and being launched yourselves. You send out the children, students, and youth you have loved and nurtured so well into college and careers. You send one another into workplaces and homes daily to share the love and grace of Christ. You launch pastors into new calls, having supported them and equipped them for the next thing. I am so thankful to have this rich soil to push off of and the ways you have formed me and my ministry.
At the same time, you are also being launched by the Holy Spirit into the next phase of the life of this church. As it is with any other experience of being launched, it can feel exciting and scary, like it is happening too fast, and that you aren’t fully prepared. Remember that wherever this church goes, you do not go alone, that like a pillar of cloud and fire, God prepares the way. I am excited to see where God leads you next. I pray that you may internalize the wisdom of Proverbs 3:5 in this time of being launched, which reminds us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own insight.”
I give thanks for my time with you and will cherish these years fondly, dear Crossroads. Thank you for your ministry.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Anna
