Advisory Council

This morning I have been reflecting on the weekend just past. Three retreats convened at the camp, all at once. Melrose Men, Manchester Men, District Advisory Council.

The wind was whipping while the temperature plummeted. On Friday afternoon, Cook Paul Ambrefe entered a kitchen that was so cold . . . well, we opened the doors to the coolers, because it was colder in the kitchen than inside the refrigerated units. The wind was so intense that it blew the cold through all the nooks and crannies of that old kitchen. Pipes burst in several areas, spraying water on the floor, where it froze. The power had just recently come back on. Just think about cooking in an unheated kitchen with ice on the floor. Paul is a man of great determination!

Jack worked diligently to get water back to the kitchen, sweating joints in copper pipe and skating across the prep area to shut off valves when new leaks sprung unto action. I was washing lettuce in very cold water. By late afternoon, people were actually asking for a chance to wash dishes, just to get the chance to plunge their hands into the hot water.

Back then, on Friday, I wondered why it had to be so hard. Why did we have to endure the kind of stuff we endured? We were things predisposed to be difficult in the Town of Windsor? Why couldn’t we have one more weekend of cold, but mild, weather? I was thinking that as I asked the Advisory Council to move their cars just in case any more tree branches succumbed to the high winds, potentially to drop onto their vehicles below.

I am a part of the Advisory Council on the district, and so I was present during part of that meeting. And I was present during the worship and the times of prayer that went with those meetings. And I listened as the district’s leaders prayed.

They prayed for you. Now, I don’t know who is actually reading this, but I am reasonably sure they really did pray for you. For hours, these leaders prayed – prayed for pastors and churches, for families and situations, for the mission of the church and for spiritual growth for its members, for cultural sensitivity and needed wisdom, for resources for ministry along with God’s guidance – these leaders prayed. Worship permeated the prayers, and a passion for God was evident as hearts were poured out before an all-knowing, ever-living God.

To be with these women and men, to hear them pray, made me thankful to be where I was. It minimized the pain of Friday, and ushered me into the presence of a Holy God. And while my questions from Friday didn’t get answered, somehow their significance seemed to melt away.

The D.S. said, “We might be tempted to request that a tabernacle be built on this place. But we don’t have to, the tabernacle is already built.” Not that anyone was tempted to linger on in that place, anyway. It seemed to me that everyone present knew the mission was out there, back from whence they had come.