Dear Caldwell,
We are Easter people – and, at Caldwell, we are busy Easter people.
Tomorrow, we will send a Habitat crew out. Call David Ashley or Sheena Bossie if you are interested in signing up. The following Saturday, May 7, we will need volunteers 8:30-noon to help plant our vegetable and flower gardens.
As for Sunday, I hope you saw my note earlier about a new Sunday School series. Diane Mowery will kick it off at 9:45 am in the Shelby Room. The series will take a look at a confession from South Africa that deals with racial reconciliation and what happens to the witness of Christ when we forcibly separate ourselves. It’s a great chance to think faithfully about what’s at stake when Christians write a creed or confession and to think about how nations deal with reconcilliation.
In worship, we will celebrate communion and consider what it means to think of God’s Easter gift of grace as an inheritance. Whose inheritance is it? How can we be the best possible stewards of it? After worship Sunday, the session will meet to receive new members. If you have been considering joining Caldwell, this is a chance to do so or to inquire about joining.
Sunday at 6:30 pm, please consider attending a city-wide ecumenical service of prayer for our community’s children. This service comes out of concerns shared by several clergy leaders – about school funding but also many other hurdles facing children. The Caldwell choir will be a big part of the music, led by Dr. Thomas Moore and Daniel Heath at Covenant Presbyterian. A variety of community leaders and pastors will help us focus on children and how we can pray for them and serve them better. It’s at 6:30 pm at Covenant Presbyterian, 1000 E. Morehead. In preparation for the service and as an ongoing prayer guide, please take a look at the prayer and study guide that is attached to the email alerting you to this post. Or you can find it on the Facebook page, Together for Charlotte’s Children.
Also, we continue to pray for our mission team in Guatamala. Having been where they are, having seen what they are seeing and experiencing, I know they are surrounded by beauty and meeting Spirit-filled Guatamalans who persevere through difficult circumstances. Please also keep in prayer the family of member Alice Mackay, whose grandson Luke Marshall Ipock was born this week. Luke Marshall remains on a ventillator as his lungs develop a bit. his mom, Darcey, was to be released from the hospital today. Alice said our prayers would be a comfort to her.
Let me close with a personal word: Last Sunday in worship, as I spoke to the children before they left for Sunday school, I said something that touched a nerve of some of our members and friends. I was holding the black cloth that had hung for three days on the cross on the lawn of the church, representing the darkness of Christ’s tomb. As is our custom, we replaced it with flowers on Easter morning. I was trying to communicate the darkness of the tomb and convey that such a darkness could not contain Christ our Lord. The object of the “object lesson” was the contrast between the deep black of the cloth and the rainbow of colors that had replaced it. In trying to draw that contrast, I used negative language to describe the black color of the cloth. Some heard what I said as, at least potentially, a sweeping negative statement about the color black, which would naturally be an offense to those whose skin is dark and for all who cry out, “Black is Beautiful.” Nothing could be further from the truth of my intent or my heart. And that was the problem. Our diversity at Caldwell is a great gift. As a gathering of diversity of all kinds, sometimes we have “blind spots” for what might hurt our brothers and sisters in Christ. To any whom I inadvertently offended, my apologies. Lesson learned.
See you Sunday.
In Christ,
John