PASTOR'S MESSAGE

February can be a hard month.  It’s cold and winter’s getting old.  The holiday festivities are well behind us, and we’re settling in to a familiar dreariness.  It’s dark.  Our vitamin D is waning, our serotonin is depleted.  What we really need is the sun, some light, some warmth, and a chance to stretch out doors.  Seriously, how many of us are grateful that Leap Year adds a day to February?  Why don’t we add a day onto June instead?      

It takes spiritual maturity to experience the joy of the Christian life in the dark and dreary cold of February.  It takes training to see the holy in the ordinary.  The ancient monks trained themselves to experience joy in the dreariness.  The monks left behind the bustle and comforts of society to live mundane lives in the monastery.  There is a misconception that monks lived off the largess of benefactors.  That is false.  Monasteries were self-supporting through the hard work of monks who wove baskets and mats to sell at market, made sandals, tended gardens, baked and cooked, and washed pots and pans. 

But the monks interspersed this hard work with regular appointments with God to worship and to pray.  The monks rose before dawn to meditate, pray, read Scripture, and have Communion.  This was followed by work.  At noon the monks said prayers and ate.  Then, they worked some more.  After the evening meal they worshipped again, meditated again, prayed again.  They lived in obscurity.  An outside observer may have found these monks toiling away in dull, boring, insignificant lives.  But the monks experienced God in the midst of this drudgery.  In fact, they wouldn’t say their work was drudgery at all.  Worshipping God transformed their work into a God-honoring vocation.  The monks cultivated the ability to experience God, and their experience of God enabled them to see the holy in the ordinary.

Maybe February can help us slow down so we can see more.  Maybe February can help us discover a passion for the ordinary.  We'll practice finding the beauty at hand - in nature and in New Castle, through harmonizing with the still, small voice of our inner soul.  But to asborb the holiness around us we'll need to reclaim the skill of slowness, of noticing.  Live as if the present is paradise, but don't neglect the stack of papers on your desk.  Every now and then, drop your sense of busyness, and schedule an appointment with God to reorient your day.  The mature Christian sees God at work in the dull, dreariness of February.  May we be so mature.