At dinner the other night, Abby looked out the kitchen window and observed, “The sun is different.” “Different in what way?” I asked. She answered, “The angle is lower already.” It was then that I knew what she meant: the further we are away from the summer solstice, the flatter the path of the sun is in the sky—it is no longer directly overhead but moving closer to the horizon. She noticed we are getting closer to fall without having to refer to a calendar.
Wisconsin summer—from Memorial Day to Labor Day—is such a fleeting time. However, we are getting ready to make the move to that “other” season. In the life of the church that other season marks the start of what is sometimes referred to as the “Program Year:” Church School, Confirmation classes, and Chancel Choir rehearsals start up. However, all of those activities don’t just happen by chance: some planning and preparation has gone into it. Life in the church, for example, means that hymns for November have already been selected and themes for Advent have been considered long before all things pumpkin spice have hit the store shelves. Lenten activities will be considered before the trappings of the Christmas season have been taken down. We always seem to be out of sync with what is going on currently.
September—and even October—may throw us a few golden days in the time ahead, but make no mistake: we’re moving ahead in the calendar.
I hope that the weeks and months ahead may provide us all with opportunities to grow in our understanding and in our practice of faith. Goodness knows that our world needs all of the witness to God’s love that we can muster.
Shalom aleichem—Peace be with you. Rev. Jim Hoppert
