Last week all authorized ministers in the United Church of Christ received a booklet in the mail: What if? A Pocket Portion of Post-Pandemic Ponderments from the Stillspeaking Writers’ Group.  It was accompanied by an encouraging letter from the Officers of the UCC.  Our denominational leaders understand how hard this pandemic has been on clergy and churches and wanted to give a small gift.  A few of the questions stood out, and I wanted to share three of them with you this week.

– What if God is transforming your pandemic pains into something new: faithful creativity, radical flexibility, hospitable fearlessness? 

– What if you regularly gave the earth and yourself intentional time to breathe and rest?

– What if the Church was fun (like, actual fun, like weird-Zoom-call fun)? 

Some of the questions made me laugh and others made me want to set aside time to actually consider them.  I appreciated the open-ended “what if” nature of the questions.  Because I think that the times in which we find ourselves living will, if not now, then eventually, lend themselves to some soul-searching.  We may be thinking anew about our jobs, our families, our priorities, about what actually matters.  So consider this Thursday Thought an encouragement to consider those “what if” questions that may be arising for you.  Asking questions can certainly help us figure out what exactly is on our hearts and minds, even if the answers to those questions may not be immediately clear.  

Love,
Pastor Lauren 

Photo by zenad nabil on Unsplash

Thursday Thoughts 1/20/22