Reverend Jennifer Nordstrom

Invitation is our opening the church year theme this September. Do you hear the community, or the divine, or your tender heart calling you back to church? When we are together, how do we invite the new—people, experiences, practices—in to our community? How do we invite the divine in? How inviting are we to change? Are we inviting in joy? Delight? Transformation?

 

In process theology, the divine works in the world not through command or demand, but through allurement. The divine works through attraction, desire, and invitation. The divine calls to us, but it is up to us whether and how we choose to answer. Before we can respond, of course, we have to be able to sense that divine lure. There needs to be enough space and quiet in our minds and in our lives that we are able to hear the divine calling us. Do you have the space to receive an invitation from the universe? What is calling to your heart today?

 

To invite means, among other things, “to act so as to render probable.” At the beginning of this church year, what possibilities are your actions rendering probable? What sort of invitations are you sending out into the world? What are you calling in to your life?