I have been thinking about how we were born into ways of being. Previous generations shaped ways of thinking and those ways felt like immovable stone in the present. But how amazing it has been to understand different experiences and to see those stones begin to move. This time and space invites us to rethink our own streams of the past. I believe it is God inviting us to love our neighbors as ourselves, not regardless of race, but because of race. The diversity in our neighborhoods, cities, countries, world is a gift. It invites us into more. The invitations we have before us feel unprecedented and yet many things led us to this time and space.

More specifically are the invitations to listen and be present. Our experiences in the past three years as a church has been teaching us to be present and listening to ourselves and one another. I believe that work has prepared us in unique ways to hear God’s invitations in this season: to love your neighbor with the gifts of being seen and heard.

In all of this, I also want to encourage you to look for God’s invitation to you to be present with Him. To be seen and heard by Him that steeps us in God’s great compassion which is needed here and now. This season is a time of big invitations that will change us, our city, our country, and the world. And it will take time.

I am glad to be in it with you.

-Dianne Morgan