The Pastor’s Piece – August 27,2023

The Pastor’s Piece

FCFI

August 27, 2023

As I sit at my keyboard pounding out the words going into this column, we are in the middle of a heat wave. It’s hot outside. But here in my basement office, it’s cool. Almost too cool. But as you read this, the heat wave has passed and it’s actually very nice outside. 

I have the thermostat in our house connected to my smartphone via an app. I can adjust the temperature from anywhere in the world that has wi-fi, which is pretty much everywhere. When my wife and I get away for a couple days, we adjust the thermostat to save energy. A few hours before arriving home, I can adjust it so when we arrive, the temperature is exactly where we want it. Remember the days before tv remote control when you had to get up off the couch to actually change the channel? Well, now, I can adjust the temperature without ever getting off the couch. It’s funny, because with our thermostat being connected to the Internet, Big Brother is constantly looking over our shoulder and I will get alerts on my phone that the humidity in our house has reached dangerous levels and we need to take action. That may be true, but … 

I didn’t grow up pampered. We had no a/c in our house or in our vehicles. We cooled off by moving air. Fans were in our bedrooms, in the kitchen, living room, and anywhere else we might be. We’d sit in the shade outside in the coolness of the day to shell peas and snap green beans and cut corn off the cob for freezing. Mom would sweat it out in the kitchen canning all the garden produce. When we went somewhere in the vehicles, all the windows were rolled down and the dog jumped in with us. We thrived in the summer heat. When school started, it was always the hottest part of the summer and we sat at our desks and sweated through the first couple weeks – no problem. When my wife and I were first married, we moved to Phoenix, Arizona where the locals told us summertime in Phoenix was like wintertime in Wisconsin. It will be so hot, they told us, you will close up your windows, draw the blinds, and hide out in your house until it’s over. They told us we wouldn’t even want to go out to get groceries. 

Summer came and it was warm for sure, but the saying is true, it’s a dry heat – there is little to no humidity. We took it day to day and we ended up that first summer without ever using our air conditioner – on purpose. People thought we were crazy – and still do. Maybe we are. At church, we set the thermostats on Sunday to 69 degrees. In the summer that is too cold for some and not cold enough for others. In the winter it’s too warm for some and not warm enough for others. We try to make everyone happy, but it’s a difficult balance. The cold ones have learned to bring a sweater even in the summer. 

During the Covid years our church stayed open and maskless despite the warnings. As a result of being open for business as usual, our congregation grew and traffic increased and bottlenecked on the streets around our building.  In 2021 we took a piece of vacant real estate next door to the church and turned it into a parking lot, adding much needed parking space. That helped with the congestion for a while, but attendance has continued to climb and parking is again a major issue. The parking lots are full and people park in the ditches, up the banks, parallel park and nose in wherever they can find a spot. It’s a good problem to have. So now, for the sake of safety and necessity, we are in the process of expanding our main parking lot to about double its current size. 

The heavy equipment moved in last week and they started digging, scraping, crushing, and compacting the new and improved space. People come to almost a complete stop as they drive by looking and wondering what we are doing. It’s a mess. It went from a nice, clean spot with landscaping and greenery surrounding it, to a gigantic pile of dirt and gravel. When we came to church the other night for our midweek gathering, there was a pile of gravel in the parking lot at least 40 feet high. It was huge. We all had a good time talking about playing king of the hill. The conversation later turned into joking about taking our ATV’s to the top of the pile. Later it was four-wheel drive pickups. Our wives mostly rolled their eyes. They didn’t realize we were more serious than joking (or maybe they did). I guess it doesn’t take much to bring out the kid in us. 

“Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field,’” (Matthew 9:37-38).