Dear friends,
Thank you for your warm welcome at both services on October 6th! I’m delighted to join you as your interim rector as you prepare for a new season of ministry. In the short time I’ve been with you, it is abundantly clear that Parish of the Epiphany is a place of great depth and generosity of spirit. This is a parish alive with a desire to pray, to grow in faith, to reach out to neighbors near and far, to bear one another’s burdens, to care for this beautiful house of God. It seems there is always something happening here.
I have been thinking of Tom Shaw, Bishop Alan Gates’ predecessor as bishop of our diocese. As you know, Bishop Shaw was a monk as well as a bishop; for decades he was a life-professed brother in the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. He once wrote, “The monastic life, with all its trappings of the Office, community, and vows, is essentially our search for God.” I would say the same is true of parishes. Everything that is happening at Epiphany – worship, prayer, reaching out to others, meetings and gatherings of all sorts – all of this, taken together, is our search for God. In everything we do with and for this parish, we are seeking to know God more deeply. Perhaps we are not always aware of seeking God in this way. But I believe that our search for God is woven throughout our life together as a parish.
And of course, to seek God is to have already been found by God, for it is God who moves us to seek him in the first place. Epiphany is a place where together we seek God and are found by God, over and over again. I am grateful to join you in seeking and finding the God who made us and who loves us more than we can imagine.
You are in my prayers.
Faithfully,
Sarah
