Dear friends,

I have been told that Lake Tahoe is so deep that if you pumped out all the water you could cover all of California in a foot or so of water. An amazing image, but what would be the use? What would be left of the appeal of Lake Tahoe if we spread it out over that wide of a piece of land?  Not much.

Last Saturday I heard a good sermon. In it the preacher spoke of the superficiality of American religious life. He claimed that if we would walk through the water of American religious experience we would walk trough water that was only ankle deep.  This a fitting metaphor perhaps.  He challenged his audience to go deeper, like the disciples Jesus ordered to throw in their nets deeper.  It seems that we are more interested in covering the maximum amount of ground that we forget to give depth to our spiritual life .  We favor breadth over depth, quantity over quality, size over contents. Over the years I have tried to make sure that at Parkview we are not just in religious life ankle deep, but that we honestly explore the depths of life our culture glosses over.  We will ultimately not be the judge of the degree to which we succeeded.  God will.

We have just started the season of Lent in which we are called to reflect deeply on the journey of suffering Jesus has to complete.  We are asked to stop and think.  The Dutch use an expression that is similar: “to stand still by”: “Did you stand still by the meaning of life;” “did you stand still by your mission in the world;” did you stand still by God’s love?”  Friends, ‘are you standing still’ by the suffering of Christ?  In other words, instead of reading the same old stories, have you stopped and thought about the physical suffering Jesus endured for us?  Have you stopped to think about the humiliation He had to go through?  Have you stopped to think of the horrible fear he had of His fate?  Have you stopped and thought about the spiritual despair He experienced in that brief moment when he felt God had abandoned Him? Have you stopped to think?  To fathom even to a limited level what the experience of His suffering was like would make us plunge to depths we are not likely to be comfortable with.  If we do that we would force ourselves to take another look at what we are doing with our lives. We would “stand still by” the way we go through the days and the weeks, the months and the years. We would realize how little thought we give to the automatic way we tend to live our lives.  We would learn to live life more mindfully I imagine.

In this hundredth anniversary year we are stopping to think about what a century means for this little church called Parkview.  Which imprint have we left, which imprint are we leaving, which imprint are we waiting to leave behind?  These are questions that do not allow for a superficial answer.  Our anniversary is a perfect time to “stand still by” and consider God’s promise. May God help us to do so. See you in church. Aart