An Extraordinary Morning

My Beloveds at Highview,

Thank you for the way our stunning Father was glorified today.
An extraordinary God, who loves to do extraordinary things with ordinary people.
Reason to celebrate.
Reason to reflect.
So many tears.
So much joy.

I am undone by your gift to me.
What you have spoken, sung, given today, is quite certainly beyond priceless and beyond what I know I deserve.

And you, the collective you, all of you and each of you at the same time,
Thank you.


For being a safe place for me to be real, and to make mistakes.

For pushing past conservative conventions and standing behind me as a woman pastor.

For all those times you let me go away for a month to the cottage.  I so needed that!

For allowing me to let Thailand become part of my heart, and releasing me to that ministry now.

For sharing some of your most awful, wonderful, intimate moments of life and death and hilarity and sorrow.

For honouring me with your confessions.

For praying for me.

For laughing with me.

For growing with me, and more often than not, in spite of me.

For being the now-famous grace-filled place that embraced my family during our darkest hours.

For pushing back on sermons or ideas with love and respect, helping to shape my thinking and giving us space to grow together.

For not settling for status quo when it comes to doing the un-glamorous work of the gospel.

For opening your arms to one another, even in the midst of significant diversities.

For opening your arms to strangers, even in the midst of significant diversities.

For trusting your leaders and being a people your leaders trust, because of course it goes both ways.

For working hard and playing hard and worshiping with everything you've got.

For trying new things all the time.


For being just the right size for the kind of loving God has for us to do.

For teaching me so much about what Jesus looks like.

For making the most important thing the most important thing and not worrying so much about the rest, except when it has to do with the most important thing.

For taking risks, and being prudent, and pushing the envelop and seeking discernment.

For taking care of each other spontaneously, and consistently.

For being uniquely wonderful in so many ways.

For being a community that is truly wretched to be away from for six months.

For trusting me to come back and hang out with you all again.

 For allowing God to write a truly beautiful story among you,
a story that has exciting new chapters yet to unroll. 

My Beloveds, 

Please know this....

Being your Pastor and being given the honour

 of serving in this way alongside each and every one of you 

has been, without question, one of the most

 astonishing

delights 

of 

my

 life. 

I cannot thank you enough.