Look! I’m doing a new thing;
now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?
I’m making a way in the desert,
paths in the wilderness.
Isaiah 43:19
Dear Friends in Christ,
Once again, we are perched at the beginning of a new year (which we have numbered 2024).
“Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?”
God is always doing “a new thing” in our lives – new in each moment. But we need to be reminded to see it; open to God’s new thing.
This new year, 2024, will bring news thing to the Federated Church of Bristol. We have declared ourselves to be an Open and Affirming Congregation; affirming “all people of every race, gender, color, age, gender identity, sexual orientation/or expression, marital status, ethnicity, religious background, national origin and physical or mental status.” And now we begin our search for a new minister; this time a minister in the United Church of Christ. In the UCC, we believe that the Holy Spirit of God speaks through the combined voices of the congregation, and so the search process is rooted in the congregation. It will require some work of us, and I know that the work we put in will reveal God’s new thing to us as it “sprouts up.”
I saw a comic recently that went like this:
“Aren’t you terrified of what 2024 could be like, everything is so messed up…”
“I think it will bring flowers.”
“Yes? Why?”
“Because I am planting flowers.”
So, let us plant flowers together in 2024.
In the Peace Love and Light of Christ,
Chris Heintz- Interim Pastor
