Sarah is just 9 days away from heading home. I am staying on for a further 10 days here in Iqaluit until August 12 and then I am heading to Ottawa to stay in an isolated retreat cabin attached to a Christian Conference Centre in the countryside, 25 miles from the city.
We have really come to enjoy it here. The people are very friendly and it is a very easy going pace of life for everyone. For example because of the small size of the place most people go home from work for lunch. I have been involved in the services each week which I have appreciated. Darren, the bishop, never fails to take the opportunity to recruit me to take on a parish in the Diocese. He has mentioned a couple in particular. Then this week I was at at a planning meeting with the leaders here in the Cathedral and among other things they were thinking about the fact that the Dean is retiring in the next 18 months. They said that I should come to replace him!
It is nice that my contribution here is appreciated and although there is tremendous opportunity here it has been good for me to reflect on our situation back home. Even up here in a remote place the Christian Community has been deeply effected by the changes in culture, the move from a society where church-going was common and central, what is commonly called Christendom, to a situation where church-going has become culturally peripheral. How do we address that? One response has been to complain about it which doesn't change anything. Another is resignation, well we will keep going with it, which will just lead to decline.
I have been thinking a lot about Jesus image of the vine and the branches. It seems to me we need to have a restoration in confidence in our proper place in the scheme of things. He is the vine, we are the branches. We don't need more abilities to compete with the world. We need to appreciate that God still loves his world in all its brokenness and he still intends to bring it to its true purpose and completion. Each person was made by God for a purpose and, yes, many are far from their true design. However, to quote Gerard Kelly, God's goal as he looks at his child is "for her to thrive; to find life; to give and receive love; to prosper in her giftings and to make a wondrous contribution to her world."
For some inexplicable reason he has called us into his church to enable all that to happen. The church, in the proper sense of the people of God, exists to bring people into their true destiny. No other agency is going to do it. We are increasingly dehumanised in every aspect of our lives. Even at the level of medical care gone is the personal care of a physician. You see any doctor who happens to be available. In church people can come and journey with us their whole life and the people of God will journey with them through all the ups and downs continually reminding them that they are gifted and loved sons and daughters of God.
We may feel inadequate to this task. We are! We are just the branches, the life comes from the vine. The one who created the world is still at his work. We abide in him.
Blessings,
Mike
