Greetings dear friends of the Capital District,
As we settle into the new year, I want to express to the leaders and congregations of the Capital District my hopes and prayers that we may have a meaningful, productive, and effective year of ministry in fulfilling our hopes, goals, and purpose in mission. I pray that we will be blessed with spirits of creativity, needed resources, a healthy portion of perseverance, and a great faithfulness that draws from the ever-flowing stream of God’s grace and promise of a future with hope.
Also as this new year introduces challenges from the rapidly changing social and political landscape, creating feelings of anxiousness, fear, and maybe even despair in many around us, may we be ever more vigilant and assured of our confidence in the sufficient grace of our Lord Jesus for every need and every situation. Let us refresh and refine our knowledge of our rich treasury of scriptural assurances such as Philippians 4:6-7 where the apostle Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Or let us be assured to hear Jesus say, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Perhaps Jesus’ twelve disciples offer us another great example of this resilience as they overcame turmoil, doubt, and bewilderment from a wayward crowd by concluding about Jesus, “to whom else shall we go, you have the words of life.”
Whether we achieve the fulfilment of our dreams this year, or whether we be forced to wrestle with the demons that haunt our very souls, may we forever remain grounded and assured in the grace of our dear Lord. Like a mother did for her son during a recent webinar about the status of our ministries at the border called “A UMC Conversation: The Journey with Migrant, Immigrant, and Refugee Communities.” One webinar presenter shared a voice memo on her phone that she shared with a young migrant teenager she was working with along the border who was anxious about missing his bus and wanted to call his mother many miles away in Guatemala. In this anxious moment, this young man’s mother leaned on the only source that she knew to encourage her son. The mom said, “You know that God has always been with you, and has never left you alone. God has never left you helpless. So you have patience, my love. Look at the opportunity that God has given you. Everyone is watching the opportunity that God has given you, how God has blessed you, the people he has placed in your path, people you did not even know that he had placed there to help you.”
May we, just like this mother, lean on our eternal source of life and grace found in Christ our Lord as we walk in ministry with others and as we anchor ourselves for the journey ahead. And may that journey be graced with opportunities, blessings, and precious souls who will be divinely positioned to walk with us and help us.
Grace and peace,
Marcus