I had been thinking about blogging again soon when an email I got this morning finally convinced me I needed to.  The email was from an online Christian book retailer.  The title simply said "Celebrate New Life- Shop Easter."  I have to admit that it made me do a double take.  I can shop with the best of them, but I really don't believe that anyone can make shopping a Resurrection experience.  The problem may be that our society has sought to convince us that it is the only resurrecting experience.  In other words, new life can only be found in new stuff and in order to get the new stuff you have to shop.

I am writing this blog on the day before Lent begins.  Now I don't think we have signs up in the stores telling us how many shopping days there are till Easter.  We reserve that experience for Advent and Christmas.  Lent is a season that calls us to prepare for our Easter celebration.  The celebration of Jesus' resurrection and the celebration of the new life that is made possible with Christ.  The way we prepare for that celebration is to acknowledge the ways that Christ is working in our lives.  We take time to reflect on what is holding us back from the joy that Christ intends us to know and we seek to change our lives with Christ's help.

We so often limit Lent to be a season when we give something up.  It can also be a time when we allow our faith to take on new significance in our lives.  Make a new commitment to daily devotional time, make prayer a habit of your heart, work on issues that have been standing in the way of your relationship with God or with those around you.  Seek to understand old resentments and find a way to work toward forgiveness.  When we do that work during Lent, our Easter experience will be one of joy because we will know new life.  We will know the renewal that Christ has brought and is bringing.

I'm not telling you to give up shopping for Lent, but don't expect it to be the experience where you will find or celebrate new life.  Our new life is found with Christ and I hope that you will find time this Lent to spend with him.

     Since March of this year, I have been receiving regular allergy shots.  You may know that allergy shots work by regularly exposing your system to very dilute quantities of the very things you are allergic to in order to desensitize your system to those allergens.  I believe that my shots have worked quite well and even though I had some issues during the fall over all I have been very pleased with the outcome of opening my self to being a human pincushion.  Even though my allergies were not as severe as some people's are, I am glad that I have chosen this course of treatment.

     Last week as I was going for my shots, I happened to notice a gentleman who was entering the building through the same entrance as me.  He was alone except for a rather large dog that wasn' too happy about being left alone in the car.  When I came out of the building, the same gentleman was assisting a woman who was clearly having some difficulties getting out of the building.  I held the door for them to make their exit as easy as possible.  I watched as they made their way to the vehicle as I got into mine.  I don't know what was going on for them.  It could have been that she had had some extensive tests and just been released.  She may have even been waking up from anesthesia since I know some of those procedures are conducted in that same medical building.  She may have just received bad news at a doctor's visit and was feeling a little overwhelmed.  She may have been suffering from Parkinson's or another chronic illness that she lives with every day.  I simply don't know what was the reality for that couple as they drove away.

     I found myself thinking about them as I made my way back to the church.  I wondered if I would have noticed them anywhere else in the world or did the fact that we were all coming out of a medical facility make me more aware.  I hold doors for people all the time and rarely do I find myself drawn into their life in the same way I was that morning.  There was a certain sensitivity that was operating in those moments that may not have been under other circumstances.  I don't know all the answers, but it was an experience that gave me a shot of sensitivity.

     My suspicion is that many times we have been desensitized to the needs of people around us.  We don't recognize the hurts and needs of others because we are too distracted by our own hurts and needs or simply too busy to respond.  That moment last week reminded me that I want to stay sensitive to the people that God places in front of me.  I want to have compassion for them and I want to respond in God's love.  In my role as pastor, people will often open their lives to me at the most difficult and painful times and I am ready to be of support.  I hope that I can bring that same sensitivity when I am just being a child of God along with all of God's children who may be hurting on their walk today.  I will lift a prayer for them whenever I see them and I pray they will do the same for me or any of us when our time of need arises.

     Join me in staying sensitive to the hurts of the world and applying the healing presence of God with love and compassion.

      I am lousy at sending thank you notes.  I suspect it flows from the fact that I rarely write anything with a pen anymore other than to sign what few checks I still write and to sign birthday cards before they are sent.  I have had the best of intentions in the past.  I purchased thank you cards to keep in my desk and I have done a very good job of keeping them in my desk.

     This thought came to me the other day after someone left a large stuffed Snoopy in my office chair a couple of Sundays ago.  He was left anonymously and so far no one has claimed responsibility.  That means I don't know who I haven't said thank you to yet.  Now I need you to know that I am very good at saying thank you and try to do it as often as possible.  In the church, the need for thanks is a constant one.  There are always individuals going the extra mile to make sure a program or a ministry is moving forward.  Hours and hours of volunteering are what make our ministry as vital as it is.

     I have seen some creative ways of saying thanks over the years especially in church settings.  There have been different awards or tokens of thanks that make the rounds from one person to the next as ministry is accomplished.  My suspicion is that there is always someone though who has been overlooked.  Someone who was hoping for a special recognition or word that just never arrived.

     I can say that because I have felt that way myself at different points in life.  When you go the extra mile, you always hope that someone will say thank you.  Sometimes you just hope that the thanks will come because you have been so faithful at doing what you always do.  It can feel like the thanks brings the process full circle as your contibution is acknowledged as being what was needed at the time.

     My fear is that one of the reasons that we don't always says thanks in an adequate way is that we have moved on to the next need or the next task that needs to be fulfilled.  In my schedule of preparing for worship, I always need to be thinking toward the next sermon or the next series of sermons before the last one has ended.  When one Sunday morning ends, the details for the next several are already waiting to be addressed.  The process of saying thank you requires spending a little more time with what has been than our schedules sometimes allow. 

     That applies to our life of faith also.  The one we owe the most thanks to is God.  Those thanks don't need to be witten, but they do need to be remembered and shared in our prayers and with others as we learn about all that God has done for us.  It is part of becoming grateful in our lives.

     I am realizing that in the time it took me to write this blog entry, I could have written a couple of nice thank you notes.  I am not going to promise that I will be writing more thank you notes, but I am going to look for the places where thanks may have been missing.  Oh and if you did leave a large stuffed Snoopy in my office a couple of weeks ago, "Thank you very much for your very thoughtful gift!" 

     You may have noticed that the church is now using a dumpster to get rid of its trash.  It is the result of the town's new trash collection process.  It sits in the far back corner of the back parking lot and tries to hide itself among the weeds which grow up around it, but since it is blue and the weeds aren't I'm pretty sure that most people can see it.  People kept telling me that once you have a dumpster folks will be more than glad to share their trash with you.  That may be more true than ever with the one barrel process in Londonderry now.  I heard that line on the way to lunch today and when I returned from lunch and went to put my car in the shade out back, I spotted the first suspect piece of trash lying next to the dumpster.

     From a distance, I couldn't exactly tell what it was, but when I got close enough I realized it was a cheap full length mirror that had been broken.  It had a backing material and frame that kept it in one piece, but it wasn't safe or easy to use anymore.  Whoever had left it there saw that the lid to the dumpster was locked and so they just laid it next to the dumpster so that the pastor could throw it out.  If they had tried they would have realized that the mirror was thin enough to get in even with the dumpster locked and that is just what I did, but not before I caught a glimpse of the sun reflecting off the mirror.  I can still see it half an hour later when I blink my eyes.

     It made me wonder if when you are throwing a mirror out next to a church dumpster if you would feel really guilty if you saw your reflection as you did it.  I also had to wonder why the church dumpster had been chosen for this particular chore.  It even made me wonder if the dumper had decided that only by leaving the broken mirror at a church dumpster would they ever overcome the seven years of bad luck they had created when they broke the mirror (please note I don't believe in the bad luck, but the dumper may very well have).  In other words, it takes a blessed dumpster to deal with the added burden of a broken mirror.

     I don't believe that our dumpster is blessed.  Even though when I watched the gentleman drop it off, I did say a prayer that it wouldn't roll down the hill toward the Lion's Hall.  I do believe that the church can play the role of a blessed dumpster.  I'm not talking about your household trash and what won't fit in your one trash barrel each week.  I'm talking about the trash that fills up your life, heart and mind.  The church is a wonderful place to make those confessions before God that have been holding you prisoner.  In our tradition, that confession can be just between you and God, but I have come to understand that it can be even more powerful when it is shared with a pastor or a trusted friend in faith.  I can't tell you how many times people have said to me as a pastor, " I've never told anyone this before."  What happens next is the miracle of the unlocking of a secret that has imprisoned someone for many years.  It is the miracle of God's grace and the forgiveness that Jesus has won for each of us.

     I'm not ready to change the front sign to Londonderry United Methodist Church and Blessed Dumpster, but I hope people know that we are both.