Journeys 9-2-12 Labor Day Weekend

For Nebraskans, Labor Day Weekend used to be a major pilgrimage weekend to Lincoln.  You’d have all those UNL students who’d just moved in, the State Fair and the first Husker home football game, causing the population of Lincoln to double.  Parking was impossible.  Getting from one side of town to another took forever because of traffic.  

Now, we have evolved so that the State Fair and all those cars are in Grand Island.  So all you have in Lincoln is an additional 25,000 UNL students and 85,000 people dressed in red migrating to Memorial Stadium for the first home Husker football game.  

Labor Day is still a crossing over weekend.  We cross over into full fledge school schedules and all that accompanies them; Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, dance and lessons of all kinds.  With Labor Day we close the book on Summer and start looking towards Fall.  In Nebraska we can predict that from here, September can be as hot as July, followed by a slight cool off before the glorious two weeks of Indian Summer in October that precedes the first snowfall.

Labor Day weekend is also second only to Memorial Day weekend for the scheduling of family reunions.  It is the last four day weekend until Thanksgiving.  And if your local pool has not closed by now, it will shut down after Labor Day.

In the church, Sunday School, KIX (our children’s afterschool program on Wednesdays), and Youth Group all start up quickly after Labor Day.  We’ll have sign up sheets out there for the Fall Financial Peace University and the Fall Adult Study on forgiveness.  The summer break from programing ends after Labor Day.  And we have to get serious about filling out those Church Conference forms after Labor Day (Parish Church Conference, Oct. 14th)!

So now is the time to be in prayer, asking God to help you to discern if you need to take one of those new adult classes this fall.  This is when you put those children and youth programs into that calendar you’ve got on your refrigerator. And rest up today and tomorrow, ‘cause the speed of life is about to accelerate toward Christmas.  It will be taking off in five, four, three . . two . . . one.  Lift off!

Grace & Peace,

Journeys 8-26-12 Farmers & Irrigation

In talking to farmers over the years, one of the benefits of farming is that you’re not doing the same thing day in and day out all year long.  Variety is what farming life is all about.  Keeping several balls in the air at once is what you live for.  Its what gives you satisfaction as you reflect on your day those few seconds each night before you go to sleep.

This year though, our farmers who irrigate have been irrigating day in and day out for longer than they can ever remember.  Some pivots have been going since May.  And those who lay pipe have been changing the gates on those pipes (mostly twice a day) since mid-June.

Ask them how irrigating is going and they just growl and give you this blank stare.  It’s like those old computer screens.  If you left them on too long whatever was on them would be burned permanently onto the screen.  This summer, irrigating has been burned permanently onto the souls of our gravity farmers.  Their stare says, “its not supposed to be like this . . . I didn’t sign up for this.”

Farmers are genetically engineered to worry, but after this summer of record drought you can smell their fear and worry that this drought thing might bleed over into next year.  Dry land farmers are grieving the loss of their regular crop this year, and, worrying that if it keeps going like this they won’t be farming for much longer. 

Farmers are also some of the greatest teachers of hope.  If your crop did not come in this year, you plant that seed next year and hope and work and pray that next year it’ll be different.  Farmers also prove year in and year out that you can grieve and hope at the same time; you can be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time.  Cause you prepare for the worst and hope for the best and then take what you get.

Say an extra prayer for our farmers  as they shut down those tired wells and pile up pipe and start getting ready for harvest.  God help them as some of them grieve the loss of a crop, and as all of them start thinking about whether they are going to be able to get up the energy to invest in planting the seeds of next year’s harvest, or, . . . not.

Grace & Peace,

Journeys 8-19-12 Blessings to start the new School Year

This is the week to bless our students, our teachers, school staff, parents and grandparents. 

God bless our students.  May you soak in all that is given you this school year and grow into who God needs you to be.

God bless our teachers. May the content of your learning be boosted by the character and personhood that you present each and every day.

God bless our school staff.  You have no idea how the little things of your daily contact with our students and teachers; your smile, your look, and your prayers, support and make a difference in their learning and personal growth.

God bless our parents and grandparents.  All the effort to herd those kids out of bed and off to school and back will show in the adults that they will become one day.  God bless your being there for all those games and events; for making sure your children have what they need to be the best students they can be.  God bless you for those hugs and kisses before they go out that door, and, for the courage to trust their growth to the people of this school system in 2012-13.

God bless our school and our community as we enter into another year of this symbiotic relationship of being there for each other.  May we all; churches, school and community do what we need to do to live into the biblical command to live for the “good of our community” this school year.

Grace & Peace,

Rev. Kelly

Journeys 8-12-12 Back to School

School starts for a lot of kids this week.  From kindergarten through High School, Thursday and Friday are like orientation days before rolling on into a regular schedule next week. The start of school tends to pull the rest of us into its regular schedule as well.

Our Emily (age 16), will be a Junior this year at Hastings High School.  Our Zack (age 21), is starting his fourth year at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Our Katie (age 23), is mailing out applications to law schools, hoping to start next fall.  

Emily is a Tigerette, (HHS Dance Team), and will be in Chamber Choir.  She also likes being in Drama Club.  She decided not to be in band this year.  So for the first time since 2002, Cindy and I are not High School band parents.  Zack is once again playing snare in the drumline of the N.C. State Marching band. He’s working toward his degree in Marine Sciences. 

School shopping for us now is more about clothes than pencils and notebooks.  I used to love getting the lists for my kids’ grade and heading to Walmart to get organized.  Zack isn’t even buying books until he goes to his classes and learns what he’ll really need.  Emily likes her back pack from last year, so there’s no need to hunt down the perfect new back pack this year either.  I am not invited to go school shopping for the clothes Emily wants. She likes to casually hunt for her school clothes all summer.  We’ve already hit the summer sales to get the homecoming and prom dresses for this coming year. 

The start of the new school year is a time of transition for everybody involved.  Teachers and students will be getting used to new groupings and classrooms.  Everybody will be adjusting to the multiplication of bells and alarms that will guide our lives for the next nine months.

God bless us during this time of transition: parents, grandparents, kids, teachers, administrators, school support staff.  Changing always needs a little extra blessing to get us through.  

I think I’m gonna go to Walmart and get a new mechanical pencil, and some notebooks, just for old times sake!

Grace & Peace,

Journeys 8-5-12 ERT to Springview

We got the call from Rev. Roger Gillming, our Nebraska Conference Disaster Relief Coordinator last Saturday night.  He said, he’d been up at Springview, NE looking at fire damage for a couple days and they could use some people to come and help.  

There were 50 people trained in Hastings by the United Methodist Committee on Relief to be Emergency Responders this past spring.  So Saturday night Cindy started e-mailing those folks about the possibility of traveling to Springview on Monday and staying until Wednesday.  In the end we had eight people who could stop, drop and go on less than 24 hours notice.  

I drove the Grace UM Church van the four hours to Keya Paha County on the border with South Dakota.  We were met at the Springview UM Church by their pastor and several members of the church on Monday afternoon.  Our churches were represented by Keith Hausler and Rev. Julie Bringleson from Rosedale and me.  The other churches represented were First UMC, Hastings; Grace UMC, Hastings; First UMC, Kearney.

Our first task was to go and clean the Norden Pavilion, 19 miles to the west.  It had housed some of the 400 fire fighters these past two weeks, and there was a Fire Relief fund raiser dance scheduled for Saturday night.  Doug Bruce from Grace church power washed the outside of the building and the rest of us wiped down all the tables and chairs and wet mopped the cement floors.  There were tiny drifts of soot everywhere inside that building.  The flames had come within a few feet of this historical building.

Each night the church fed us supper.  We cooked our own breakfasts at the church and packed our own lunches to take with us to the work sites.  Part of us slept in the church basement on the cots we brought.  Others slept in members’ homes or in the vacant parsonage.  In the mornings before we headed out, we’d share the best and worst of our previous day, and, where we saw God that day.  What was shared was just amazing.

Tuesday we split up.  Part of us went to help a young couple who’d lost everything but their house to the fires.  He is a custom carpenter and logger and he lost his shop, inventory and all his wood working equipment in the fire.  The fire had come within a few feet of their home, but the house was spared.  Some helped clean the soot inside the house.  Others helped cut burnt trees that had fallen on power lines and hauled off other debris around the house.  The other half of our group went to help a man who’s house was just being built and the fires had melted the exterior plastic wrapping off the outside of the house.

Tuesday, some went back to the newly built house, the rest of us went to a ranch 25 miles west and south of Springview to help clean off the red fire retardant that’d been dumped and sprayed on the buildings on a ranch tucked in a valley not far from the river.

The church folks at Springview were so gracious and hospitable.  Everyone we helped was so appreciative of our coming there.  Our short three days together changed them and us for the better.  

Thanks to both Doniphan and Rosedale for your extra offerings to help with this disaster in our state.

Grace & Peace,