Greetings Gatherers!
Earlier this week I got a text from Angel. “Hey PT (for ‘Pastor Tim’). Just talked to Marcella about the Goodness of God and wondered if you might want to use that as a theme for April. I would be willing to pull things together.” We experienced something very similar last Thursday, when Tony Perez, following his own heart, led our conversation around sacrifice, sharing his wide-ranging knowledge of indigenous peoples and practices.
This is exactly what we want Gather to become—
a collective effort that celebrates the faith and creativity of everyone,
according their gifts and talents.
I jumped at the chance to do a little brainstorming with Angel and we’re fired up about where April’s Gather YouTube (4/28) is being guided. BUT WE WANT/NEED EVERYONE’S PARTICIPATION TO MAKE IT WORK. (Yes, that means you.)
The April Theme
The Goodness of God is a perfect theme for April. It is, in every way, a SPRING theme, a way of allowing confidence in divine goodness and love to break through the cold ground of our hardest challenges and sprout into full blossom right before our eyes. The psalmist struck this chord perfectly in rhapsodic King James English:
“I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness
of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13)
The same spirit radiates from CeCe Winan’s brilliant recording “The Goodness of God”—the song that got this whole conversation started.
The April Collaboration/Ask
We want EVERYONE (yes, including you) to think about Psalm 27:13 and listen to/watch the CeCe recording a few times. How are they speaking to your spirit? What do they reveal? Once you’ve spent some time listening, thinking, meditating, STEP OUTSIDE INTO THE SPRING AIR and tell us what you’re hearing in a short video. (Two, three sentences are good.) As soon as you’ve got something you’re pleased with, click below to upload your contribution no later than April 24.
Because we come from so many places and life-ways, we need to hear from you and you and you! Don’t overthink it. Listen to your heart. It will tell you what to say. And we look forward to hearing what you’ve discovered, from your yard or porch or a nearby park where spring is bringing new life to the world!
Divine goodness and spring—it truly is a match made in heaven!
Blessings,
Tim