Dear friends,
“Hey, how about this one?” Kyle Shepherd turned his computer around. Fran Bogle, Clair Ball and I were intrigued: how could Kyle create a meme just like that? Our different generations were showing!
The meme depicted a superhighway with an exit curving off to the right. The sign on the overpass said it all.
If you keep going straight, you are heading for despair. If you choose the exit, you are on the road to hope.
A car veered, somewhat wildly, onto the exit, as though the driver had struggled to decide until the very last minute.
Clair, Fran and I laughed. The meme captures the challenge of our times.
A few weeks before, our Stewardship Team selected our theme for the season: “Choose Hope.” The theme reflects our experience of Edwards Church. When it is easy to ride the superhighway toward despair, our worship and our caring help us notice and choose the pathways that lead toward hope. As a community, we consistently choose to act in hope and to act for hope. Each of us chooses hope when we invest our time, energy, talent and treasure to enable this church to thrive.
Ultimately, the meme Kyle created is an incomplete representation of our theme. We don’t choose hope as a last-minute decision. We choose hope as a habit, something we practice every day. We choose hope together.
You’ll see the meme sometime during our Stewardship season. For our “Choose Hope” Stewardship logo, though, we selected a different image. It is a rainbow circle of hands holding hope in the center. The hands remind us that choosing hope is not an abstract concept; it is about how we use our hands (or our feet or our voices or our hearts) to care for our neighbors, ourselves and our world. The circle reminds us that we are in this together: we need each other to choose hope. The rainbow colors honor the truth that each of us brings our unique gifts and perspectives to the circle; we need all of them.
I am excited about our Stewardship season. We will hear from multiple members of our congregation, as they reflect on what it means to choose hope through our church. Fran Bogle will preach one Sunday, with the intriguing sermon title: “Hope is a Four-Letter Word.” A trio (Martha Coleman, Kelly Lopez and Sarah Whiteman) will offer a special anthem. The choir will sing a new piece based on Emily Dickenson’s famous poem about hope. We will hear more about where we are and what we need to thrive. You will receive a mailing with information and inspiration as we invite you to pledge as an expression of your choice for hope.
I am so grateful for this community, for our consistent choice to hope together.
Peace, Debbie