As I write this, most of us have yet to meet. By the time you read this, It’s likely that we will have shared at least our first Sunday together. So in a sense, I guess I’m writing to you from yesterday. What could I possibly write about the future, even if it is just a week or two away?
Since I cannot confidently guess much about the future, I’ll come back to the present. I know, that’s a few yesterdays ago for you, but stay with me. So a few yesterdays ago, Christina and I were already feeling at home even in a house full of boxes. That is to your credit as a congregation. Your many expressions of welcome before we ever arrived and the members who have visited since have encouraged both of our hearts a great deal and added so much to our excitement about staying in Wheeling.
I say “staying” because we have visited Wheeling almost every year of our thirty years together; either for reunions or work conferences, or to visit my aunt and uncle. As I type this, it occurs to me that since my parents moved us to Huntington in 1985, I have rarely gone more than a year without returning to Wheeling for one reason or another. Nevertheless, it is not lost on Christie or I that we have been visitors. To be a visitor, no matter how frequently, is not very different from being a stranger to the real and deep life of a place. Yet it is hard to really feel that way about that piece of Wheeling that is Christ UMC. Christie and I feel already that we are home. Now that stems in part from the perspective on life out of which we live. It was best said by an Indian mystic, Rabindranath Tagore. To paraphrase: “The man who is at home in his own soul can be at home anywhere.” More than that, we and you have known and loved more than a few of the same people. Most defining of the feeling Christie and I have of feeling at home is that we and you love and take seriously the life and teaching of the same Jesus, devotion to the same Father, and the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit. Both of us have felt this in your cards, your emails, the wonderful conversations we have already had with members and church leaders, and in all we have read and seen of the work Christ UMC does in caring for one another and for the community. Indeed, Christie and I are very glad to be in a congregation where our hearts feel so much common ground.
So today we are happy to be here. We are happy to be staying instead of visiting. Most of all, we are happy and eager to share in and contribute to the life of Christ UMC and the life of this city; together with you. I am certain, by the time you read this, that feeling will have only grown stronger.
Yours in Christ,
Joe Hill