As many of you know, I traveled to the Cleveland Clinic last month for open-heart surgery to replace a part of my aorta. The surgery was successful and I am quickly recovering at home.
Let me first say thank you from the bottom of my new and improved heart. I received e-mails, letters, cards, and phone calls from people all across the church. They became an important lifeline to the world outside of the hospital.
They were also a daily reminder that we are a connected church — through relationships and a love for Christ that transcends any of the current arguments.
I also want to thank the Presbytery of the Western Reserve. I received tender and grace-filled pastoral care that helped transform a place strange to Kathy and me into a home. The presbytery staff, local ministers, and two inquirers that were taking clinical pastoral education prayed with us and brought much comfort.
One of the things I found I could not do in a hospital is sleep. Thanks to our friends the Gideons, I was able to spend the time between having my vitals checked to reading God’s vitals. I was drawn over and over again to Philippians, my favorite among the epistles. In Phil. 1:6 we have this hope: I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.
If you had told me two weeks ago that I would be sitting at my dining room table on a sunny day writing this column, I would have laughed — or more likely moaned. Yet, here I am. Some of you may think or feel at times that laughing or moaning at our Presbyterian plight is the right response.
It may be on some days.
However, the vital word from Philippians is that we need to be confident that God will finish this holy project — the project of you and me and 2.3 million other folk in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) giving visible witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. Such a witness will transform this world.
May God give you hope this day and this night.
