Our Connections

Today is the first day of summer, and I like summer.  I like all the daylight we get; usually it'll be after 9:00 pm here in NC before it gets completely dark.  And I like the summer fruits and vegetables, and I like the life in the trees, plants, grass, and yes, even the bugs.  I like ice cream and warm days, and I like to watch thunderstorms form.  Their massive structures fascinate me.  Now...I like all the seasons for their diversity, but I often feel more connected to nature and to God in the energetic summertime.  

These past few days I have been attending Annual Conference for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.  Say that three times fast - whew!  We meet at Lake Junaluska, NC, which is a little bit west of Asheville.  It's a beautiful place near Waynesville and Maggie Valley.  Interspersed among the beauty of nature, we gather for worship and attend to some of the business of the Church.  Granted, we all don't agree on all that gets voted upon, but hopefully we remember the reason we exist as the church - to help transform the world by sharing God's love in real and tangible ways.  And we're here because of God's equal love for all of us.

Annual Conference also reminds us that we are connectional.  That means that we don't exist as individual churches; we're part of the big United Methodist Church.  And beyond that, we are all connected to the Church - God's church.  And we're connected to each other whether we're church-goers or not.  We're all human, after all.  We're connected to each other in the midst of our differences, diversity, worship styles, clothes preferences, stations in life, and on and on.  God's love is displayed through our differences.  So we should celebrate our God-gifted differences and allow them to bring us together to talk - to get to know one another's stories.  At times, we see our differences as reasons for separation and labeling.  But our differences connect us together; they bind us together into a vibrant tapestry of humanity.

We all have our hopes, dreams, fears, joys, tragedies, and triumphs.  We are fragile creatures, yet we are incredibly strong and resilient.  Together, we can create beautiful, life-affirming, and reconciling connections that cross over cultural, age, gender, sexual orientation, class, and language differences.  We can come together to appreciate and celebrate one another in the different 'seasons' of our lives.  Sometimes we find ourselves in warm, life-giving seasons like summer.  Sometimes, we're smack in the middle of cold and darkened days.  Sometimes we agree; other times we don't.  That's life.  But we're created to live together.  And we all matter to our Creator.  And we are all here on purpose.  We're all connected.  We just need to remember that.