As our family prepares for our eldest daughter’s graduation from high school and our other girls graduating from elementary school, I am acutely aware of how much our girls have grown over the years. Yet, as I watch old videos, I am equally reminded of how much their personalities have remained the same. It has been a joy to watch these changes happen over the years, but it is only in looking back, that we can see the magnitude of the transformations.

I am an avid Star Trek fan. Recently, I’ve been watching the series, Star Trek: Enterprise. The theme song for this series is based on Rod Stewart’s song Faith of the Heart. The opening lyrics are: “It’s been a long road, getting from there to here.” Every time I hear these words, I think of the last 15 months. It has been a long road, and many of us are tired and exhausted by this pandemic. When it began in March of 2020, none of us anticipated it would be over a year before we would gather again.

Each year on this weekend, my parents would rustle up my siblings and I and take us to the cemetery. We would bring with us our large concrete pots filled with plastic flowers and place them on our relatives’ graves. It was not my favorite activity, but I did enjoy hearing the stories my parents would tell us about each person.

A few weeks ago, I was able to make a pastoral hospital visit for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. While hospital visitors continue to be restricted, clergy are now allowed to see non-Covid patients. And thanks to being fully vaccinated, I can safely make visits again. As I walked into the hospital, I was surprised by how normal it felt to resume this part of ministry. Aside from an emptier parking lot and screening questions at the door, Good Samaritan seemed relatively unchanged from my perspective as a visitor.

For the past six years, I’ve kept a brief daily journal. The format I use sets up each day with room for five consecutive years of journal entries. Which means that when I write my daily entry, I also can read what I wrote on that date the previous year. As I’ve been reading through last year’s entries for March, April, and May, I’m amazed at how many changes we absorbed in a very short span of time. Grocery store shortages, on-line worship, cancelled spring and summer plans, school closures, zoom meetings, our church merger vote…the changes kept coming.

Last Sunday, I spent the day working outside in my yard. It was such a beautiful day and I desperately needed time away from my electronics. If I was going to have an abundant harvest this summer, I knew I had a lot more to do to get the yard ready. I spent the day weeding, adding enriched soil, and even removed some plants that had overgrown their spaces.

When I arrived at Puyallup UMC last Saturday morning to record the sermon video, I noticed that we had visitors. I’m not sure where these two ducks were headed as they wandered around our parking lot and onto the grass along Pioneer Avenue, but I enjoyed watching them. I wondered if they were nesting somewhere on our property or looking for a place to build a nest. They didn’t stay long, but maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see them again in the next few months, with a line of ducklings following along behind them.

When I was in high school, I took a class on computer coding. I remember after one exercise, my teacher looked at my code and said something like, “Well, this gets the job done but it is way too complicated.” It is amazing sometimes how a benign statement can hold such meaning for us later in life.