A note from our Senior Warden - Happy New Year! Here we come 2024!
HAPPY NEW YEAR - A note from our senior warden
Happy New Year! 2023 is now in our memories and our history. 2024 is stretching ahead of us full of the unknown and wonder. I remember as a child being allowed to stay up late playing cards or games with my family on New Year’s Eve, desperately hoping to stay awake until midnight. As I grew older I enjoyed celebrating the “glitter and glamour” of the night OR I went to bed early, needing to get up to be at work before 7 am. In more recent years, I have been enjoying spending evenings with family or friends in fellowship and traditions. Throwing a pot of water out the back door, (getting rid of the old) and eating 12 grapes at midnight for each month of the year to come. I consider the coming of the New Year a time to reflect and remember. It is also a time for new resolutions- a change, being open to a new possibility, letting go and beginning anew. Taking time during the winter season, just as nature does, to restore and plan for what lies ahead.
We have just experienced a time of Advent, when we prepared and waited for Christ’s birth. Christmas was a joyous celebration of recognizing Christ’s arrival into our world in human form. A gift from God to the world! Epiphany is now coming.
Jenny Walpole, a licensed lay minister wrote:
“The gifts of the wise men allow us to ponder our own gifts; those given to us by God which we share with our family, our community and in our work places. Is God pleased with the way we use the gifts he gave us, or do we make excuses for not using them well? Perhaps God doesn’t mind how we use our gifts as they are freely given, as love is freely given. Regardless of our new year’s resolutions or failure at them; in offering ourselves, we offer our talents as well as our shortcomings. Epiphany is a good time to ask ourselves ‘what we are really looking for?’ Or ‘what is holding us back from offering our gifts to God?’”
We will continue this year in 2024 to search for our next permanent Rector. We plan to post the position beginning again this month. Stacey will be remaining with us for now. The search for our next Music Director continues. The grants we received both from our El Camino Diocese and Trinity Church Wall Street will provide for us in progressing in our Church of the Future. The Annual meeting for 2024 is scheduled on Sunday Jan 28th after our worship service, more details to come and I invite each of you to attend. What are you wanting to see, hear about or participate in here at ECA in the upcoming year? What gifts can we offer to ourselves, to each other and into our greater community? For fellowship, outreach programs, education or worship? Please reach out to myself, Stacey or any member of the Vestry with any of your thoughts or ideas.
Epiphany is a time of ECA’s Star Words. Soon our sanctuary will again be sprinkled with multiple stars. Each star has a word on it. I invite you to consider how that word might speak to your life in this new year. Perhaps you could use it to lead your prayers this year. Perhaps you could tape your star to your refrigerator or bathroom mirror and when you see it, remember that you need to look up, look to God and follow the star that is guiding you. Perhaps it can be your reminder that what you do with the light that has shined in your life does matter. Is it a gift to be used by you to reflect upon, to remember, to restore or to make a resolution for? Perhaps a part of each of these. What awaits us at ECA in the coming year? I cannot say I know, but I am open to it. I DO know that God continues with his plan for us! Happy 2024!
Ellen Lukanc,
Senior Warden