Good morning…
Today is Senior Sunday at our church, an annual celebration of the high school seniors raised by our church family. Every year, I love to flip through the traditional glossy trifold bulletin announcing the name, the high school, and the college of choice for each fresh graduating face. This unusual year, I noticed three changes right off the bat:
1) The treasured Senior Sunday trifold arrived quietly in our mailbox earlier this week with a kind letter from the Student Ministries Director and a leather-bound study Bible, instead of being handed to us directly as we walked into Sunday worship.
2) Our youngest child’s face is the first in the crowd of forty-eight seniors honored. The curse or the blessing of having a last name starting with “A.”
3) After working at Northside Church for fourteen years, it seems this year a larger number of these young adults have listed their chosen college as “TBD – To Be Determined.” Indecision seems ramped up in these uncertain times.
All of us teeter on the edge of “maybe.” The poem below illuminates to the precarious position faced by this “Covid senior class” and all of us hemmed in by the darkness of not knowing what’s next.
******
I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe by Ted Loder
O God of beginnings,
as your spirit moved
over the face of the deep
on the first day of creation,
move with me now
in my time of beginnings,
when the air is rain-washed,
the bloom is on the bush,
the world seems fresh
and full of possibilities,
and I feel ready and full.
I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
a first time,
a new thing,
a tentative start,
and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.
In silence, Lord,
I share my eagerness
and my uneasiness
about the something different
I would be or do;
and I listen for your leading
to help me separate the light
from the darkness
in the change I seek to shape
and which is shaping me.
******
Change is certainly shaping all of us as we tentatively traverse the tightrope between “maybe” and “maybe not.”
The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
(This is the first ever recorded moment of “maybe/maybe not.”)
Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Genesis 1:2-3, NLT).
May we patiently endure together these mysterious moments of “maybe.” Formless. Empty. Dark. Our world has waited here before. We will wait here again. As we each settle into this weird time of waiting, do we trust God to speak light into our own experience of “To Be Determined”?
…Sue…
P.S. Feel free to worship with our church family at Northside. Join us via Facebook or our website.
8:30AM · Traditional Worship
9:45AM · Contemporary Worship
11:00AM · Traditional Worship
P.S.S. Check out our 2020 Senior Pictorial here. Please pray for God’s light to lead the lives of each graduating senior in this “Covid class.”
