"Under Construction"

The road to Bethlehem is open (from the west, anyway), but it’s kind of hard to get here right now! The County is working to put in traffic lights at the four-way stop east of the bridge, and to align our driveway with Dublin Drive. All of it eventually will make the drive to and from Bethlehem a whole lot safer than it has been in the past, so it will be well worth the temporary challenges!

From where I sit, I’ve been able to watch the deconstruction and construction in progress as the heavy equipment moves earth, and it’s been pretty interesting. When our son was young, he and his friends were fascinated by “diggers.” The heavy equipment would come in to start digging the foundation for a new home in the area, the boys would climb on their bikes and ride to the vicinity, and then put down the bikes and just sit there on the grass and watch – transfixed – by the size of the equipment and the hole it would dig.
Through my office window, this week I’ve been able to watch those giant claws digging nearby, as though they’re looking for something deep in the earth.

During the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of construction going on at Bethlehem as we put in place the infrastructure that helps to make disciples. The fall worship and learning schedule has resumed, and I have been awestruck by the building that God is doing in the hearts of Bethlehem people these days.
People are coming back after the summer: some who go to cabins every weekend, some who just take couple of months to breathe, and kids who grow, I declare, 4 inches over the summertime.

• Preschool is off and running, and oh how wonderful to see the smiles on the faces of young children, so filled with eagerness for the things before them in every new day.
  
• Parents are stepping up to the plate to teach Sunday School and serve as Guides for Confirmation (but yes, we are seeking more teachers and assistants for young and middle-school aged children!!). There’s a real sense of joy filling our classrooms.
  
• I can see the delight of people who are re-connecting with old friends and others beginning to make new friends and build relationships that I hope will last a lifetime.
  

People come to church seeking a living relationship with the living God; some stay away from church because that isn’t what the church has given them in the past. Often the road they have to follow is as complicated and winding as the roads to Bethlehem right now. But somehow through the Holy Spirit, and maybe through you, God is calling them. One of my seminary teachers, the late Dr. Gerhard Forde, I believe, once interpreted the Gospel for Sunday as God relentlessly seeking, searching, digging, for each person, thinking and whispering and repeating over and over, “The one: gotta find the one, gotta find the one, gotta find the one.” What Good News when you know you have been found by God! What a great calling to be sent to tell and show somebody else that God has found them, God is with them. Jesus says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my one that was lost.”

Dear God, seek out your children and send us to search. Amen.

--Pastor Dee Pederson