This is my final column to you while serving as your pastor. For your love over these past many years, thank you. I pray you never forget my love for you.

There is so much that I could say as I close this particular chapter in my life, our life together. I have contemplated whether to go deeply into the vast reservoir of experience of the past five years, or keep it light and move on. I have contemplated whether to begin to name names of certain special people with whom I have worked especially close, but then you run the risk of unintentionally overlooking someone. I have contemplated lifting up certain people who have touched my life profoundly through their grace and warmth and love, but they know who there are – and they know that I know, and that is enough. Certainly I must thank publicly Tricia, my wife, and my entire family for their patience and love for missing me so much of the time as I served others. I must also express my deep appreciation for my able partner-in-ministry, office administrator Melissa Stuart, for her unstinting support and humor.

If a person lives a good and long life, one can only hope to experience special times during life when all things truly seem to work together for good. Not that those times were always comfortable or without pain or some discouragement, but times you just knew in your soul that things were working together toward the same goal. You were buoyed and strengthened by a sense of unity and flow to life that provided a lasting sense of thankfulness and joy. These past five years with you have been just such a time for me. I can only pray that it has been in some small measure the same for you.

And I wonder how that could be? How it is that we have been so blessed to have done such work together with a growing sense of community and resolve amidst such rapid change and growth and challenge?

Over these past several months as you have processed the news of my leaving and your welcoming soon a new pastor, more than a few of you have expressed to me how grateful they are to God for my relationship with them. On more than one occasion tears have come to my eyes following reading words expressed of blessing. Please know that I have been blessed by God to have served as a conduit for blessing.

Again, I wonder how that could be. We know the answer.

All that we have ever attempted or considered has been for the sake of God’s blessed gift of the Gospel in Christ Jesus. It has been shown in so many ways that I dare not attempt to provide a list. All the work we have engaged has been for the Spirit-inspired work of communicating God’s work among us according to God’s good pleasure and sovereign plan. It is true.

All has been according to plan, for it is God who is working all things “together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” God foreknew you and me before our birth. God has guided you and me in our spending these past years together in the steady work of the Gospel – God’s purpose. That purpose continues for you in this setting. God’s very nature of purposefulness and resolve will continue to be at work among you as you remain earnest to communicating the news of forgiveness and mercy through faith in Christ Jesus. By God’s grace, I too will remain about that work among those who are advanced in years and thirst especially to be reminded of God’s gift of mercy and love.

I will miss you. In some ways perhaps you will miss me. Yet we are bonded for eternity in Christ – together with God. Remain steadfast in your focus upon the proclamation of the Gospel through the various ministries present at Saint Nicholas. Remain open to the transforming work of God’s Spirit that often surprises us in the midst of our endeavors, but never disappoints us as we surrender ourselves to God’s work in and through us.

God is faithful. Love each other always. Forgive freely. Never forget the love that we have shared. Continue with the work we have started. In whatever you do or say have it always be to the glory of God.

Until we are together again for all eternity…I hold the blessing of you in my heart. The gift is forever.

Pastor Randy