Dear Friends,
The other day I was going for my walk down the PanAm path on the hydro corridor just west of our home. A man, walking his dog, was walking towards me, in my lane! I decided it was easier for me to move, so I moved over to the other side of the path. “Oh, the dog won’t hurt you.” said the man. “I’m not afraid of the dog.” was my reply. He laughed and said, “Yes, that is what things have come to these days, isn’t it?”
At the end of 2020, there were lots of lists around of lessons we are learning from the pandemic. One lesson common to many lists was the importance of connection, of community. That is such an integral part of our Christian faith. Luke, in the book of Acts, writes about how the early Christian community devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, day by day, spending time together in the temple (Acts 2: 42–47).
As we look over the past few months, maintaining connections with one another has not always been easy. We can’t spend time together in the church building or visiting in our homes. That is what things have come to these days. But through phone calls, Tidbits, the website, the informal carol sing on Zoom last month, the novel methods of holding the Village Fair online and of distributing the Amnesty letters, and through prayer, we maintain our connection to one another.
And one of these days, as the vaccinations ramp up, we’ll be together — in person!
Revs. Bob and Helen Smith
A version of this message first appeared in the Saturday, January 9, 2021, edition of Tidbits.