An Update from Pastor Jeff

Good morning!  I just wanted to give you an update this morning.

            First, I want to thank everyone who watched our first livestreamed service Wednesday night.  It looks like quite a number of you did, and we appreciate that.  We’ll be livestreaming our Sunday morning service at 11:00 and our Sunday evening service at 7:00, and we hope you’ll watch those, too.  They’re live on our Wheatland Parish facebook page, and after they’re done I post them to my personal facebook page.  Feel free to share them with others as well.

            When will we be able to have in-person worship again?  I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone does.  We originally said we’d suspend in-person worship through the end of March.  We got an email from the Dakotas Conference yesterday that said we should continue not having in-person worship for “the next weeks”.  How long is that?  I don’t know.  I don’t think the conference knows.  That’s not a criticism—the situation is changing weekly, sometimes daily.  All I can tell you is that we’ll resume in-person worship as soon as we know it’s reasonable and safe to do so.

            Life is strange right now.  We all have to hang in there.  I recommend that you try to keep your life as normal as possible in this abnormal time.  Take reasonable precautions, of course.  But what I mean is, go to bed at your regular time, get up at your regular time, eat meals at your regular time.  Try to keep the regular rhythms of your life as much as possible.  Keeping things as normal as we can will help us feel normal in these abnormal times.

            And try to keep your sense of humor.  From what I’ve seen on facebook, a lot of you are doing a good job of that so far, and that’s good.  But the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be.  But we need to keep trying.  Yes, this is serious—we know it’s serious.  And I know it’s easy to say “make the best of it”.  But what’s the alternative—make the worst of it?  How’s that going to help?  Sitting around complaining and wringing our hands won’t help anything.  Washing our hands will, but wringing them won’t.  Try to keep your sense of humor intact through all of this.

            And keep your faith in God.  You know, at a time like this, we make a choice.  We either run away from God or we run toward God.  It’s your choice, but let me ask you:  if you run away from God, where are you going to go?  It reminds me of John Chapter Six, when a bunch of people turn away from Jesus.  He asks the disciples if they’re going to leave him, too.  Peter answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

            You know, this is not the first time in human history that we’ve had hard times.  Just in the last hundred years or so we’ve had two world wars and the great depression.  We’ve had societal upheaval in any number of ways.  It’s not even the first time we’ve had a pandemic.  But God has always been there and God has always seen us through it.  God will do that for us again. 

            One more thing:  keep caring for each other and finding ways to be there for each other.  Jesus’ command to love our neighbors is always important, but it’s even more important in times like this.  If we’re determined to stay together, if we’re determined to care for each other and be there for each other, we’ll find ways to do it.

            So hang in there.  Know that God is good, and God will see us through this.  Know that the church is still here for you—you can contact me by phone, by email, by text, by facebook, in all the ways you usually can contact me.  Do your best, and keep trusting God.  Thanks for watching, and have a blessed day.