Pineridge Blog

I wonder if it is just me, but this feels like a crazy time. Sometimes the past seems like a foreign country, and the future is more uncertain than I can ever recall.

Politics seem to consume a lot of the oxygen in the room and are often described as “broken.” But the chaos in the political world are symptoms rather than the cause which seems to be best described as “change.”

Life in this moment feels like being on a rafting trip on a Colorado river. We have been passing through wider, slower water, all the while we could hear an ominous roar in the distance. Now we have come around the bend and while it may feel like we are going over the falls, we are plunging through a narrower, faster moving rapids. It is stressful and scary sometimes, to be certain, but this is why we came in the first place, right? The scenery is no less beautiful here than it was back in the safer water. We just need to be reminded to glance up from time to time and take in the full view.

The poet, peacemaker, minister, and scholar John Philip Newell helps us take in wider perspective, “We live in a moment of grace. Through the hedges of our divisions we are beginning to glimpse again the beauty of life’s oneness. We are beginning to hear, in a way that humanity has never heard before, the essential harmony that lies at the heart of the universe. And we are beginning to understand, amidst the horror and suffering of our divisions, that we will be well to the extent that we move back into relationship with one another, whether as individuals and families or as nations and species. . . .”

It is a crazy time, which is unprecedented in history. But I deeply believe that most of all it is a time of transformation.   Something is changing. Something is dying, but something new is being born. By the grace of God we are called to this moment as midwives of the future God is creating. 

Remember: God is good, work together and enjoy the ride!

Jim