Transcript:
Hallelujah. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Greetings beloved in Christ and happy Easter. Christ is indeed risen. God’s love has triumphed over death. God’s grace has triumphed over brokenness. God’s mercy has triumphed over sin, and you and I are the benefactors of that love, that grace, and that mercy. I pray that you will meditate on and rejoice in the gift that we are given through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. I pray that this Easter tide, that grace and love and mercy will be manifest in your life. I want to let you know that this will be the last video that you will have from me for about 12 weeks.
Mike Orr, our Canon for Communications and Evangelism is taking sabbatical time and he will be away for three months, and during that time, we will not be publishing my weekly videos. I want to take a moment to share about the importance of sabbatical. For those of us who do this ministry full-time, we know that it is not a nine to five job. We are in it all the time and even on our Sabbath days, things happen. For me. They happen for members of my staff. They happen for your full-time, clergy person.
And so, sabbatical time is important because it allows us time to renew our own spiritual stores. It allows us time to dive deeply into our own relationship with God. The goal being that when we come back from sabbatical, we have a full bucket from which to share our gifts and our ministry with all of you.
I ask you to pray for Mike as he takes his sabbatical time, and I want to let you know that your bishop will be taking sabbatical time in the fall of 2025. I ask you to pray for me and I eagerly seek your support as I take this important time to renew my own spiritual stores, to dive deeper into that vocation, to which God has called me.
And I hope that you, if you are a clergy person, are thinking about your sabbatical if you haven’t had one. If you are a layperson, I hope that you will encourage your priest or pastor to figure out how to take sabbatical time because that time is important, not just for the person taking it, but for all of us who receive the ministry and the grace and the God-given gifts that the clergy and the diocesan staff have to share.
I wish you all blessings this Easter tide and you’ll see me again in July. Blessings.
