The Wardens, Vestry, Rector and Missioner for Youth and Young Adults began our Vestry Retreat last night. We will continue through late this afternoon.
We understand ourselves as selected and elected Servant Leaders in Christian community.
Our time together will be spent in the work of prayer, actively discerning what God might have us do to serve the people of God at St. Paul's this year and take on the mantle and responsibility of leadership as servants to the servants of God.
We will do this within the context of Eucharist, bringing before God our hopes and fears, our dreams and brokenness, amidst the challenges of a fragile economy in which many of us are unemployed or underemployed or live in the anxiety of losing our jobs. We are staggered by the recent news report that seventeen of our neighbors have lost their homes in foreclosure so far this year.
Yet we live in sure and certain hope. We will fortify ourselves with that hope, strengthen the bonds of trust between us, and listen to each other and God for a Word of truth about our vocation in this time and in this place.
Of your mercy and kindness, please keep us in your prayers today that we may trust in the abundance of God in this time of scarcity and anxiety and find the strength and courage to do - and be - God's mission in the world.
"Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell." Frederick Buechner
Come in! Come in!
"If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer; if you're a pretender, come sit by my fire. For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!" -- Shel Silverstein
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