Dear friends,
This week marked the official beginning of summer. With the Summer Solstice on June 21, we enjoyed the longest day of the year. It is beautiful in Concord, truly a green season. Many enjoy traveling, gardening, walking the local pathways, dining outside in the still cool evening air. Happy Summer!
The Church also marks a green season. Longer than summer, it began on the day after Pentecost (May 28), and continues until the day before the first Sunday of Advent (Dec. 3). This season of “Ordinary Time” is understood as “living out our Christian faith and the meaning of Christ’s resurrection in ordinary life.” (Episcopal Dictionary of the Church). The liturgical color is green, as a reminder that we are to be tending to and growing in faith.
The collects and Scripture readings during this season lean heavily on the Old Testament prophets, Paul’s letter to the Romans, and Matthew’s Gospel. We hear the stories and parables that shape our faith, challenge us to understand God’s revelation of Godself through Jesus’ life and ministry, and what it means to follow Jesus on the Way.
We may enjoy our summer green season as a time to relax, but the Church’s green season invites us to use these light-filled days to ponder the mysteries of God’s love, mercy, grace, forgiveness in our lives and to share it with one another. What summer practices could you adopt this year?
How might you incorporate prayer into your summer season in a new way?
Take the bulletin home and pray the prayer list with your family or with your morning coffee.
Consider attending church every Sunday, either here or wherever you are.
Introduce yourself to someone new at our Lemonade on the Porch and ask them what their summer prayer is about this year.
Try out the new Trinity Corn Hole game on the lawn with a young person or newcomer as a way to get to know someone.
Read a spiritual book as part of your summer “beach” reading. Need ideas? Call Rev. Nancy for suggestions.
Schedule a Chapel Chat…it is beautiful out here now.
Mark your calendar now for upcoming Trinity outreach and fellowship events so you and your family don’t miss them (more on this in the Window soon).
Br. David Vryhof (SSJE) encourages us to know ourselves as God’s beloved and to take our faith seriously because: “Our quiet, steady, unwavering commitment to Jesus Christ may inspire in others a curiosity and a desire to understand and embrace this faith. The way we live, the way we speak, the way we serve, the way we love and honor one another and those whom we meet, may inspire someone we hardly know to seek God by exploring the Christian way.”
So friends, our lives are anything but “ordinary” when we live in awareness of God’s love for us and for everyone else. Enjoy the beauty of the overlapping green seasons—Summer and Ordinary Time, as you grow in faith and love with Jesus.
Your sister in Christ,
Nancy+