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I trust you’re having a good week and a meaningful Lenten season… for those who are actively observing it. I’m going to be honest with you – this year’s Lent, for me, has so far been a bust. I find myself struggling to connect with the season’s depth and purpose. And I know this is probably not a good confession for a pastor to make, but, it’s real. Typically, Lent is a time for reflection, repentance, and renewal—a period where we draw nearer to God as we prepare our hearts for the mystery of Easter, the centre of our Christian calendar. Yet if I’m being totally honest, this year, that closeness feels… elusive at best.​

Maybe I’m just getting old but time sure seems to be moving fast these days. My wife reminded me that this week marks the five-year anniversary of COVID being declared a global emergency. Five years! Remember trying to figure out what 6′ looked like for social distancing? Or the panic-buying of toilet paper? How we all got into baking sourdough bread like we were auditioning for a baking show and learned (some of us STILL learning) how to unmute ourselves on Zoom. Those were wild and unpredictable days. No one knew from one day to the next what the next new thing to be flung at us would look like.
But then something happened.

Ugh. That’s the sense I get these days when I think of social media. It wasn’t always like this. I worked directly in the “social media industry” for over 10 years and have been an avid user of these tools for ~10 years prior to that. At one time I thought social media was a pretty solid tool – you could get your message out there into the world and people could engage with you on it. It served as a sort of town square for virtual communities. Social media was largely responsible for alerting the world of real-time events that led to the Arab Spring, leading to the overthrow of several authoritarian governments and widespread political and social unrest. During the pandemic, social media was our main medium for getting important public health messaging out to the world. And it worked wonderfully. Honestly, it had such incredible potential.

But then something happened.

Another week. Another wild ride. I appreciated all the feedback and thoughtful comments on last week’s post. I confess my weekly meanderings in this space oftentimes end up being for my own catharsis and processing and on those occasions where there’s resonance with you, I count it a beautiful bonus. So, thanks 🙂

Speaking of my own catharsis and processing, I thought for this week’s meanderings, I’d share a bit from a recent journal entry.

Let me say off the top: I am hesitant to get political, recognizing, particularly in this role as pastor, how politics so often leads to division. As such, I will never tell you how to vote and I firmly believe church and state should remain separate. That said, as a pastor, I cannot ignore how the political landscape of the US is affecting the mental and spiritual well-being of our own community—let alone those directly impacted by these policies. Over the past two weeks, many of you have shared your unease with me, and I sense a growing heaviness. Every headline seems to bring fresh reasons for concern, uncertainty, and even despair. To simply turn away from it all because “pastors shouldn’t do politics” would be an abdication of the call to engage with the world as it is.

This series we’ve been doing on the Bible has not only been challenging–at least for me–but somewhat unexpectedly, it’s been a major eye-opener for me. My study has led me to learn all sorts of new things about the Bible and if I were to summarize it in a sentence it would be simply: Objectively, the Bible is the most unique book in history.

It’s New Year’s resolution season which, in our home at least, has brought up the discussion of becoming a more generous person. If you’ve got kids, this is probably something you want to instill in them but the challenge is, how do you teach being generous? I know the best way to teach anything to your kids is to model it in your own lives so, yes, we’ve sought to do that, but when it comes to generosity, the whole “Don’t let your left hand know what the right hand is up to” (Matt. 6:3) teaching makes this somewhat tricky.

Check out what our community has undertaken, through God’s grace,over the past 12 months…

As many of you know I have our church library in our living room which is pretty handy when I’m sermon prepping. Last week while prepping for the message on Advent Peace, I found myself thumbing through “Beyond Homelessness” – a book about “reconciling Christian faith in a culture of displacement.”

Something’s up. Do you feel it? It’s possible it’s just the Christmas jitters but I think if we’re honest, it’s more just ol’ fashion tension. It’s felt in conversations with family members and friends we haven’t chatted with in a bit. Maybe it’s present at the office or job site. Maybe in school. There’s… something unsaid that is being said very loudly between us in the various spaces and contexts we find ourselves in each day. I could probably point my finger to a few sources, but let’s just be real and concede that whatever this something is, it is almost certainly tied to the political situation south of the border and its leaking through our own border. Regardless of political “side” you find yourself on–if any at all–the tension continues to result in a drifting apart from one another, which royally sucks because in this season of togetherness we’re entering, it’s the connecting and moving toward one other in authentic ways that really makes the holidays such a meaningful and special time.