“Trusting God’s Faithfulness, Living God’s Love”

At the Session and Deacons planning retreat on August 15, we adopted a watchword—or watch phrase—for Covenant: Trusting God’s Faithfulness, Living God’s Love. The purpose of a watchword is to focus our prayers and our waiting on God.

As we seek God’s guidance for the future, we remember all the ways that God has been faithful to Covenant in the past. We are likely to hear many stories of God’s faithfulness as we prepare to celebrate our 75^th Anniversary in October, and I invite you to share these stories with each other—stories of people depending on each other and encouraging each other to live out their faith in a variety of ways. Stories about how Covenant overcame obstacles and discovered surprising new possibilities. Stories about mission trips that lead to some kind of epiphany and lives being changed.

And as we discern where God is leading us next, we also turn to the second part of our watch phrase: Living God’s Love. What does it mean in our own time to love God and love our neighbors? This Fall we will explore this question as we begin our new sermon series: “Wisdom for Being and Living.” We seek wisdom not simply for the sake of being wise, but so that we can learn what it means to live well—to know ourselves as God’s beloved children in every imaginable circumstance and what it means to rest in that love; and, flowing from that, what it means to reach out to others and share God’s love.

In our sermon series this Fall we will turn to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, looking at six passages from the Book of Proverbs and four passages from the Book of Job.

I hope to see you each Sunday, as we prepare together for our momentous anniversary celebration and as we discern together what it means to be wise.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Jack