A Word from the Pastor

How We Spent Our Dash

Socrates wrote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This implies that one reflects on the past to learn from it and to avoid repeating it. This is much different than what I suggested in my article last month to avoid trying to live life through the rearview mirror. Looking back to learn from the past is worlds apart from trying to live in the past. Again, coming to the end of my time as your pastor, I want to reflect just a bit.

You may have heard or read the poem, “The Dash,” by Linda Ellis. (See Page 7) Although it refers to the dash on a tombstone, between the beginning year of one’s life and the ending year of one’s life, I want to look at the dash between the beginning year of my ministry and the ending year of my ministry here at First. The dash is the time between the beginning and the end and deserves our reflection.

If you go to the library on the second floor of the Foote Education Building at First, you will see the photographs of each of the pastors of First. Underneath each photograph the are two dates and one dash. Soon my photograph will have a second date. . . it will look like this: 2005-2019. Fourteen years or five thousand one hundred fifty-one days.

To reflect on this personally, it is astounding. When the Shettlers arrived in 2005, both my parents were alive. They joined the Church Triumphant, Dad in 2012, and Mom in 2017. We came as empty nesters and without grandchildren. Now we seek to keep up with five grandchildren under the age of twelve: Mac 12, Larkin 12, Parker 11, Anna Read 9, and Ellie 6. God has been good to us personally through these fourteen years. Soli Deo Gloria.

 
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Expectantly for your future and ours,