Blessed Sabbath to each and everyone, may you know God’s blessing a new. I have returned from ABHOW meetings. The theme was “ A time of Stewardship” and there, of course, was a fair amount of reflection on the ramifications of stewardship. ABHOW is a not-for-profit corporation and keeps track of the variety of ways that it gives back to the community. Its benevolence is over twice what it would have paid in taxes if it were a for profit company. Of course, this stewardship gives back to the communities in a way that could not be possible if it were a for profit company. Their “Affordable Housing” arm continues to grow, especially in Washington. It was a good meeting.
I have been reflecting on the work we did at our leader retreat. We considered Evergreen as a jigsaw puzzle, with the corners being our core values. We’ve already considered three of the corners, “unity”, “cultural diversity” and “acceptance.” Today, I’d like to reflect a bit on the fourth, “shifting perspective.” Another way of saying this might be that we are ready and willing to be transformed and we believe we have been called to transform our world, through the love and grace of God. We do hold as a value that we are learning new ways of doing things and we are called to share these learnings outside our doors. It may be that people will tire of hearing of our adventures with caucuses and consensus, but our value is that what we learn can help others. We are a learning organization!
I’ve also been prayerful about the Birdsall family as they celebrate Steve’s life these days. It is always hard to lose a child, we keep Dick and Arlene, Steve’s wife Polly and their two children in prayer. And I am also prayerful about Marcus Walker and his family as we continue to pray for the miracle.
God’s grace and peace to you.
Marcia
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