– Kim R. Smith, Sound District Lay Leader
I woke one morning recently to a text from my daughter living in Japan. It was a gorgeous picture of the lunar eclipse taken by her husband, Combat Cameraman Kowshon Ye. It brought me comfort to know I would be looking at the same moon that evening. I felt connected to my daughter yes, but also to something so much bigger. I felt inescapably connected to humanity…the universe…and to the God who created it all.
The most valuable lesson I learned in 2022 was that connection MATTERS. I knew connection was important on so many levels already. The new lesson was just how much connections matter to me personally in all aspects of my life.
As the former C4C Coordinator for the Sound, I smile at the memory of the MANY churches who with one email request, became makeshift schools following a hurricane. Congregations became cafeteria workers for school staff and hospitality workers making sure coffee was available all day. We became custodians and tech support and hearts who could help so many teachers and administrators heal as they tried to deliver instruction.
We were collectively doing something and sharing the love of Christ in a way that would have been far more difficult without connection. During the same time, churches were becoming hubs in communities across ENC to provide needed supplies our Early Response Teams had ready to go before the hurricane ever made landfall. How easily we often forget the fact that we can do so much more together for the Kingdom than we can ever do in isolation.
I remember a phone call from a stranger on the Upper Room staff. She talked with me about my submission and in passing I mentioned how fun it would be for me to see something I had written in different languages. The Upper Room is distributed in one hundred countries and translated in over thirty languages.
One day, I opened a package, and it was full of copies of the edition in fifteen different languages. It was and still is…overwhelming to me to imagine hearts in one hundred different countries reading and praying the same prayer TOGETHER. Connection is powerful.
This year my goal as District Lay Leader is to try and help remind your hearts of the many reasons connection matters so much in this hurting world. It not only matters for the hearts that can be reached around the world as we work to create disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…it matters to the hearts in our communities and our neighborhoods. Connection matters to our own hearts even if we sometimes forget how much.
Tonight, step outside and look at the moon. The same moon that hearts in Ukraine, the Middle East, Asia, and the entire world will look at as they prepare to rest. We are all connected at the most basic level…our creation. That connection is something to be treasured, to be nurtured, to be celebrated and is one of…if not the thing I love most…about being part of the United Methodist Church. I value being a part of a larger faith community that can impact hearts together in ways that my one heart could never do alone.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Romans 12: 4-5 NIV