These beautiful thoughts were shared by Amy Ard during worship on November 3.
I am thinking of an object. It’s about 2x3 centimeters, and I’m reasonably sure it’s the reason I’m standing at the lectern of Glenn Church right now.
I was born into this church; I was the first baby in the “baby room” at Glenn Preschool; I was on church council in high school and hardly ever missed a Sunday night gathering of the youth. But this object—this tiny little object—is probably the reason I’m here today.
It’s a stamp.
When I graduated high school and left for college, I got newsletters from Glenn in my college mailbox. I missed my Glenn family and read them hungrily for news of the community I’d left. I wanted to know what babies had been born, who was in the hospital and, yes, which saints had passed.
Then I went to Chicago, and the newsletters kept coming. I was on my own in an exciting city, and I can’t promise you I read much. I might have even complained to my mother that the church was wasting postage on me.
Then I was off to divinity school, and those newsletters got a little more interesting. I read them to learn what this community was doing, how it was responding to the issues of the day, how it treated the vulnerable, and how it engaged the world.
When I had my own children, I decided to try church again, and not feeling particularly brand-loyal, we went to Presbyterian, Episcopal and Lutheran churches. Still, the newsletters kept coming. And I kept reading.
Then my family ended up back in Atlanta, 27 years after I’d left the first time. By then even my children were receiving mail from Glenn, when they went to summer camp at Glisson and for birthdays. They knew the logo, and they knew this community. All because of stamps.
I imagine if I asked each of you what you love about Glenn Church, pretty high on your list would be the sense of community you find here—the people. And that’s certainly true for me. I have loved so many of you for my entire life. Still, I know community is not built magically, even though when you feel it sometimes, you know it is God moving among and between you.
No, community doesn’t just happen. It takes work. And yes, building community takes money.
I do not know what I’ve cost Glenn Memorial through the years in postage. I’m sure it’s a number that would shock some members of the finance committee. But how fitting it is that this particular stamp I hold today has one word on it—LOVE.
This stamp is how God’s love has been manifested to me through a lifetime, a simple reminder that here on this sacred ground a community is always waiting to welcome me home. And I know that without your pledges, without your generous giving through the years, there would have been no trail of newsletters and notes to lead me back home and no wonderful church home to come back to. I am grateful for your pledges through the years and hopeful that we can continue to make God’s love real in the world … even if only one little stamp at a time.
by Amy Ard
Commitment Sunday
Sunday, November 17
Lunch Follows the 11:00 Service
You will receive your pledge cards next week.