Reawakening in the Spirit
People of Minneola, thank you. Thank you for trusting God, yourselves, and the call to sabbath that led to our shared Sabbatical Season. In the coming months the lessons, sorrows and joys of this time disconnected will continue to be revealed but as we return to an embodied relationship, I pray all of our hearts remain rooted in gratitude for this gift offered through God’s command to sabbath amidst this trusting and faithful community.
For my part, I return with three clarifying messages that I will carry into this next season:
God provides. Over and over and over again.
Christ’s table is the centering and grounding force in a Christian life.
The Spirit may not show up in the way I expect but will always be present in the way I need.
Not one of these messages is earthshaking or groundbreaking and I don’t think they should have been. Sabbatical was a time of rest allowing the Spirit to do her work of reawakening and reinspiring core beliefs within me that focus and direct my daily life practices through my vocations as Christian, wife, mother, pastor, and friend.
Bottom line, the Sabbatical Season offered me to time to remember that a Christian life is one of transformation. Jesus asks so much of us. He asks for everything that we are and provides the Spirit to sustain us in that whole body work. Faith isn’t a Sunday morning gathering; faith is a every second of everyday practice that is impossible to sustain without a community of believers surrounding us. We have found that faith community right here in the people of Minneola Lutheran Church and in the weeks, months and years to come I pray we, as church, sustain our faith, seeing ourselves within these stories of Christ, seeing each other as the glorious children of God we are and follow the Spirit’s direction into the world with the practices we begin, end and transform in our daily lives.
- Pr. Hannah
