Thoughts from the Parish

I hope by now that you are have discovered the website and are looking forward to the updates each month.  This project has been a true labor of love for me and I greatly enjoy the process of creating and maintaining the website.   It is an ongoing process and as part of the beginning of it we had to apply to the Global Board of Ministries and receive permission to publish the website through their generosity.  They provide a certain amount of space for churches to use for free - my thanks, as I am sure yours do, go to the Global Board of Ministries of the United Methodist Church.

I am hoping that the Rush County United Methodist Parish Website will become a parish wide project.  I want to include features, notes, and news from members of each of the churches in the parish.  Surely you have stories and anecdotes we would all enjoy hearing.  One of the stories that occasionally we are reminded of in McCracken is when we were in the former United Brethren building (before unification) and the floors were wood and slanted all the way to the front.  If pennies or marbles were dropped (now what kid would do that? lol) you could hear them roll all the way to the front!  One of our members said that one of the best things we ever did was to carpet the church!  :)  I'd love to hear your memories of the past - distant and not so distant.

As Raynell mentioned in the Parish Newsletter I am interested in receiving histories of the individual churches and also how our current parish came to be.  If someone, or a group of someones, could take that on as a project in each church and then send them to me I'd love to read them and include them on the appropriate pages.  Another item I'm planning to add to the McCracken page soon is a listing of former pastors beginning with the establishment of the Methodist Church in McCracken.  It seems that every so often a conversation includes a discussion of which pastor was here when such and such happened and this just might be a place to check and see who was here when!  Of course it is just interesting to read through the names of the pastors that have lived and traveled with us on our journey through life for a while.  If you would like to do the same for your individual pages I'll be glad to add them.  Also, sometime this year, it is my goal to include pictures of the individual churches along with their histories on the individual church pages.

It is my hope that this website project will grow through the participation of members across the parish, indeed this is necessary for true success.  I also hope that you can proudly tell friends, family, former church and parish members the address of the website when they ask what is going on in your church or parish...that we can reach beyond the physical borders or our parish and county and touch lives by sharing our growing vital community of faith through the medium known as cyberspace!

Sally Irvin  

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Raynell:

   [This past Spring] brought a terrible, deadly tornado to Hoisington.  I, like a lot of others, had relatives or friends who were directly affected.  Some lost their homes and possession, others escaped with minor damage, there was physical and a lot of emotional injury and sadly, the loss of a life.  Everyone was affected in one way or another.
   It is hard for those who have never been through such an event to understand the emotional toll it takes.  Everyday items you use, soap, razors, a certain article of clothing, isn't there, things we take for granted each day.  Even after building or moving has taken place, you go out of habit, to get an item, but it's not there and you stand in disbelief.  The full extent of what has happened sometimes does not set in right away, it can happen much later.
   Some people say, "but its just things that were lost."  But these things do shape our lives; each "thing" has a memory attached to it.  We are creatures of habit and we all hold on to items because of the memories associated with them or to things passed down through generations, pictures...it hurts to lose these things.  In that loss, this is where our faith steps in.  Just having thoughtful cards helps, and most of all, our prayers.  The people of Hoisington need all of these things and will for a long time to come.
   It will take time to heal, lots of time. The rebuilding will help, but the bad memories will never fade.  We can learn to live with them with through God's help.  As hard as it seems, something good usually always comes from something bad, even though we don't always see it.
   Let's keep Hoisington in our prayers.  They have a long road of healing ahead of them.

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This next passage was written by a friend of mine, Gretchen, and although she is not a member of our parish I thought it worthy of entry here:

 

A week later, those of us who hadn’t lost or destroyed our mustard seeds, returned them to class, thinking we had completed our task, feeling very proud of ourselves. Sr. Shirley complimented us on keeping our faith safe and secure but was a little disappointed that none of us had planted our seed as a way of keeping it from harm. "How could our faith in God grow," she reasoned, "if we don’t plant the seeds of faith?" She then had us read another scripture passage:

 

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." Matthew 13: 31-32

Sr. Shirley…such a wise teacher! Through demonstration she showed us that keeping faith was a very difficult task and growing it required planting, care and letting it be there for others to take refuge in. Out loud to the class, she surmised, "If the faith the size of a small mustard seed could make a tree jump into the ocean, what could we do if our faith was even bigger?" Could we move mountains? Could we convert hate to love? Could we overcome evil in this world?

 

 

So now you’re saying, "Nice story, Gretchen, but what’s your point?" Today I am sending you a mustard seed as a reminder that if we have the faith, even as small as the mustard seed, we shall overcome the evil that has befallen our world. We may take a few more licks before this whole ordeal is over but keep the faith. Things will get better. And God will be at our side, giving us the refuge of branches, grown from the fruit of our faith, to rest upon and be sheltered by.

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