A Moment with the Mission Centre President–2021 is Upon Us!

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Indigenous Lives Matter
Lives of People of Colour Matter

Last week I provided information about programs and activities from Canada West Mission Centre coming up in the next two months. You can review that entry here. It includes summary program information and links to more details about each one.

I want to repeat the notice for this program coming up this weekend:

• Exploring a Post-Pandemic Church: Discern, Plan, and Act in Hope: This session will provide a focused opportunity to learn about, discuss, and begin discerning what church will look like once we emerge from the constraints of the pandemic. This workshop takes place over two Saturdays, 2 weeks apart (January 16 and 30). All congregational members and leaders are urged to participate in this workshop. We have had a good response to this workshop. In fact, we currently have more folks from Canada East registered than from Canada West! It would be great to have a last-minute influx of CWM people. Please register right away to take advantage of this important workshop.

Now on with THIS week’s message: Have you noticed that we are in a new year?

The theme scripture for this past Sunday from the church’s worship resources was the first five verses of the Bible:

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
                            --Genesis 1:1-5, Authorized King James Version

What if we were to approach the new year as if it is a new creation? A new beginning? An opportunity to do things differently – and better?

This analogy may go sideways sooner than later, but bear with me for just a few more sentences… If we are leaving 2020 behind us and consider it to have been a less-than-ideal year, might we consider 2020 analogous to being “without form, and void” and perhaps even a place of darkness? And can we pray that the Spirit of God might move upon the face of our waters. And, oh, that God might command, “Let there be light!” And that “there (would be) light” to help show us the way through this new year. Surely, we would celebrate that evening and that morning being the divinely promising first day. And surely, we could promise God that we would celebrate that new creation and build the new year so much better than the last as each day succeeded the other.

Well – certainly, we can pray. And, most definitely, we can conduct our lives in this new year so as to recognize the points of joy that come our way as we are privileged to enjoy them. And may we give thanks to God for this new beginning and for the blessings that will come from it.

You can judge how well that hopeful and well-intentioned analogy worked for you. My intent and my conclusion is that 2021 is now upon us with a “blank slate” ahead for the next twelve months. It is up to us to make it a better year than the last one and, come next December, to be able to look back on it and declare with God that “it was good!”

As always, I pray for you God’s blessings of joy, hope, love, and peace in these challenging times.

​​Steve Thompson
Canada West Mission Centre President
steve@communityofchrist.ca