March 2023 Newsletter
Hello!
I went on a walk. Walks were a big thing during COVID. It was all you could do. It was Spring and our whole family would go for a walk and we would wave across the street to other families out for their walk. Walks were a big thing for me when I was growing up. My mother and I would take walks, sometimes formal, but mostly informal. By that I mean, sometimes we would go to the Lowry Nature Center or the Arboretum for a walk, but most times we just opened the door after dinner and went around the big block on Howard Lane and Country Road 17. We would get back to the end of the drive way and ask each other, “Shall we go again?” We usually did, sometimes 3 times.
Today I did my COVID walk from my house, to Lafond, down to Fairview and back on VanBuren. It was treacherous. I knew it would be. There was a light dusting of snow over melting ice and water. I slipped twice, but no falls. I did see in the snow where someone had obviously fallen, I passed carefully and reverently. I saw squirrel tracks and dog tracks, I saw a young mother with her baby strapped to her chest, the baby smiled and waved at me. I saw a blue wooden house, with a very pretty yellow enclosed porch. Next to it was a stucco house with a full-sized skeleton sitting in the entry way. Not a real one. I saw a few houses that have perpetual Halloween displays, some houses with Christmas decorations and one house, the champion, that had put up St. Patrick Day decorations, leprechauns and four-leaf clovers. Well done, a house that reflected the actual calendar.
For much of the walk I thought about the story that I will preach on for Sunday: Matthew 20:1-16. The parable of the vineyard workers. You may know it. A landowner goes out to the market place and hires day workers to work in his vineyard, he hires some in the morning, some mid-morning, some around noon, some midday and some just before the end of the work day. He tells the first group of workers he will pay them the usual daily wage. He tells the next group that he will pay what is right, we don’t know what he tells the next two groups, but when it is five o clock, we hear the landowner ask the group of workers why they have been standing their all day. They reply, “Because no one has hired us.”
That just makes me so sad. It seems as if no one thought they were worthwhile enough to employ. I wonder if that is when the landowner decided right there to pay every worker in his field the same amount—just to let the last group know their worth.
I don’t want to write my sermon for you right now. But on my walk, I contemplated this story. I thought about the end of the story when the full-day workers are angry, envious of the landowner’s generosity.
I thought about how often I pray, that we may walk in the way of God. I thought about and did ask God to walk with me. I missed my mom. I thought about how this very morning I had been envious of God’s generosity, comparing myself to a friend and wondering if they were not more blessed than I was.
I assume God did walk with me this morning; I assume that because I believe God is with us daily. God was very quiet, however, not much to say. That is okay, not great, but okay. Some days are just like that. I hope if you take a walk with God today, God is chatty. I hope that God tells you that you are deeply loved, that you are very worthwhile, no matter what. Shhh….I think I just heard God now…