The day after Easter, Chris and I took a mini-road-trip (a viajito, if you will) to the Olympic Peninsula to visit friends in Port Angeles and to check out the Tongue Point Marine Life Sanctuary, a collection of tide pools on the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
We’ve seen miniature tide-life before; the photos we’ve taken of barnacles, bull kelp, rockweed and their watery friends that plaster our apartment walls are proof enough of that. But we’d never seen anything like what we found at Tongue Point.
Anemones that transform their dull above-water appearances into incomprehensibly vibrant colors, hot pinks and electric greens, when submerged in water. Starfish – huge starfish! – in oranges and purples Crayola couldn’t rival. And an endless carpet of mollusks – a mollusk planet, really – we eventually got used to walking on top of.
What worlds lay just beyond our horizons? What colors have we yet to see, to paint with? What thriving ecosystems are already at our shores, just waiting to be discovered?
Yesterday I had the opportunity to hear Phyllis Tickle lecture at a nearby church in north Seattle. Tickle writes about “emerging” forms of Christianity, new ways of being and doing church that are part of an already-underway global shift that she believes will be as important as the Reformation.
As I listened to her muse about the future of global community and the future of the church, I thought about those tide pools and the vibrant worlds that flourished within them, worlds I’d never imagined could exist. Yet here they were, only a few hours from home. I wonder whether a discovery like our discovery of the tidepools is something like what God has in store for all of us in a future nearer than we think.
On May 2nd, Jerry Buss with be with us to lead a conversation during adult forum and to preach during worship. Jerry is the Director of Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission for the Northwest Washington Synod. I hope his visit will be one spark for an ongoing conversation about the vibrant discoveries God has in store for us here in this place, this year and in the years to come. Please join us.
I pray God’s blessing on all of us as one season of new life gives way to another.
In Christ,
Intern Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment