Rectitudes~~~
Thoughts for January, 2008
Thoughts for January, 2008
OLD NEWS
By the time you read this it will be perhaps a week into the new year, 2008. You will have
already started writing checks with the right date, the kids will be back in school, routine will
have reasserted itself: whatever “Normal” is, it will be back, in some shape or form. The new
year will be old news, ho-hum. (Remember how we worried about computers and banks and
planes crashing with Y2K? There’s a dinosaur of a memory…)
It has been wonderful to get to meet you folks who are St. Mark’s in the glorious rush of the
holiday season. You were the Fuller’s Christmas present, and we hope you didn’t mind finding
us under your tree as well. Thank you for all the many kindnesses, large and small, that have
made us feel so very, very welcome. Thank you for the mounds of goodies we will be working
off for the next two months—thank goodness Lent is early this year!
Your welcome and our joy will never be “old news”. As we learn to be together as Christ’s
church in this place, that first impression will endure. Good news always endures, even when it
becomes “normal”. We have been telling the same good Old Story for a very long time, but it is
new and fresh and glorious every time we encounter it again in the cycle of Christmas, Easter,
Pentecost and all the rest. We are part of that story, and God is messing with us just as he did in
the times and ages when the Story was first lived and told.
Some homework for you for the new year:
• Find a way to make the Old News intrude in your life every day. Read the daily office
lessons, or Forward Day by Day, or just a chapter in your favorite Bible. But get it under your
skin. Daily. Learn to pray it and make it your story.
• Make a habit of looking for someone to invite to join you at worship. We don’t want to be
headhunters, but we do want to be real friends, engaged in other people’s lives about the most
important things and not just superficialities.
• Expect worship to change you and us as a church. We meet with the living God—that is
not exactly hum-drum everyday stuff. We are called to something new and finer than we can
imagine. Be ready for some wonderful surprises. (No, the rector is not going to change the
Liturgy….the Liturgy is going to change us!)
Christ bless your every new day and year!
Frank Fuller+
By the time you read this it will be perhaps a week into the new year, 2008. You will have
already started writing checks with the right date, the kids will be back in school, routine will
have reasserted itself: whatever “Normal” is, it will be back, in some shape or form. The new
year will be old news, ho-hum. (Remember how we worried about computers and banks and
planes crashing with Y2K? There’s a dinosaur of a memory…)
It has been wonderful to get to meet you folks who are St. Mark’s in the glorious rush of the
holiday season. You were the Fuller’s Christmas present, and we hope you didn’t mind finding
us under your tree as well. Thank you for all the many kindnesses, large and small, that have
made us feel so very, very welcome. Thank you for the mounds of goodies we will be working
off for the next two months—thank goodness Lent is early this year!
Your welcome and our joy will never be “old news”. As we learn to be together as Christ’s
church in this place, that first impression will endure. Good news always endures, even when it
becomes “normal”. We have been telling the same good Old Story for a very long time, but it is
new and fresh and glorious every time we encounter it again in the cycle of Christmas, Easter,
Pentecost and all the rest. We are part of that story, and God is messing with us just as he did in
the times and ages when the Story was first lived and told.
Some homework for you for the new year:
• Find a way to make the Old News intrude in your life every day. Read the daily office
lessons, or Forward Day by Day, or just a chapter in your favorite Bible. But get it under your
skin. Daily. Learn to pray it and make it your story.
• Make a habit of looking for someone to invite to join you at worship. We don’t want to be
headhunters, but we do want to be real friends, engaged in other people’s lives about the most
important things and not just superficialities.
• Expect worship to change you and us as a church. We meet with the living God—that is
not exactly hum-drum everyday stuff. We are called to something new and finer than we can
imagine. Be ready for some wonderful surprises. (No, the rector is not going to change the
Liturgy….the Liturgy is going to change us!)
Christ bless your every new day and year!
Frank Fuller+
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