When I contracted a breakthrough case of COVID this past summer, along with other mild symptoms, I completely lost my sense of taste and smell. My spouse remarked to me that I didn’t have any taste to begin with, but I’m uncertain what she meant by that. In any event, losing two of my five senses was profoundly disorienting. All these many weeks later, I am just now slowly regaining them.

It often surprises people when I tell them that during the two years we lived in Egypt, we never visited the Holy Land. Now some Egyptian Christians would take offense at that description, since they consider Egypt to be a holy place – the refuge to which Jesus and his parents fled, according to the Gospel of Matthew. It is only 700 miles across the Sinai Peninsula to get from one country to the other, if you don’t take the circuitous route Moses did when leading the people to the promised land. Of course, years of conflict, both political and violent, have meant that traveling between the two countries is fairly inconvenient.

This coming Sunday during worship we will celebrate the Ordination and Installation of two classes of Elders and Deacons. These church leaders were elected in January of 2020 and 2021 and have begun their service, but we wanted to wait until we were worshipping together in person to have them respond to the Constitutional Questions and ordain and install them to their respective offices.

If you are someone who notices changes in the liturgical lineup on Sunday mornings, then you may have observed that in our desire to retain the ritualized act of offering as a part of worship, we have introduced the phrase “Invitation to Discipleship.”

We have come to call the first Sunday after Labor Day when we kick off a new program year “Rally Day.” To rally means to come together again to renew an effort; to join in common cause; to recover and rebound after illness; a mass meeting of people for a purpose. Each of these definitions seems appropriate just now as we begin a new program year of Christian nurture and discipleship. Continuing to emerge from this long pandemic season we have much to celebrate as a community beginning to regather.

Some of our students are a week into school, while others are enjoying a few more days of vacation. As the school year begins, our students are facing another year filled with uncertainty in addition to the normal back-to-school worries. Some are worried about going to new schools; some are concerned about new academic pressures; and others just want to make a friend. Our children are navigating this strange world as their teachers, administrators and families balance worries around health, safety and community.