God is with me. I am with God.

“How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count

them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you,” Psalm 139:17-18

NRSVue

Dear Edinburg FUMC family,

September is here, and that officially marks two months of our journey together! I want

to sincerely thank you for your warm welcome, kindness, and all your help as I have stepped

into this role as your pastor. It has been such a joy to get to know you more deeply, to see your

faces and your Facebook comments during Sunday worship, to share meals with you, and to

chat over coffee at Coffee Hours at The Grind. A few of you have asked how long I’ll continue

with Coffee Hours, and I’ve decided to make it a practice. So, I’ll be at The Grind every Thursday

morning from 9AM to 12PM to offer a space of fellowship. I hope to see you there!

It feels like life in the church is coming into full swing again. The praise band is back, and

we eagerly await the choir’s start. Our Shoe Bank campaign will start this week, and the Shoe

Bank committee has many exciting ideas to carry on this legacy of service to our community.

Campus Ministry celebrated the beginning of the school year and UTRGV’s first-ever football

game on Saturday, August 30. We look forward to building deeper relationships with our

college students at cooking classes, chapel worship, and Bible studies. And—our Wednesday

night Bible study is officially re-starting Wednesday, September 3! We’ll meet at 6:30PM for

food and fellowship, and our study time will begin at 7PM. Over the next six weeks, we’ll be

studying the Gospel of Mark. It seems fitting that for a month of beginnings, the Gospel of Mark

opens in this way: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened

just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah: Look, I am sending a messenger before

you. He will prepare your way, a voice shouting in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord;

make his paths straight.’”

As we settle back into the rhythms of our church, we come to them as a kind of

beginning. We come to them with new ideas, new faces, new ways of reaching out into our

community. This is not newness for newness’ sake, but we embrace the creativity of the Holy

Spirit so that we can live into God’s call to be a kin-dom community where all belong, where

strangers become family in and through Christ. Newness can be exciting, but it can also be

dizzying. I bring you the words of the psalmist from Psalm 139, “How weighty to me are your

thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the

sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.” I am still with you. No matter what, friends, God is

with us, and we are with God.

God is at work in and through our EFUMC family. I see this spark of God’s transforming

love every time you embrace each other in Sunday worship, every time I see you gather to pack

rice, beans, carrots, and onions, every time I hear that you called to check on a loved one, and

every time I hear the giggle of a child in our worship space. There is so much life here, and there

is so much life to come! 

As we embrace our church rhythms and lean into the creativity of new beginnings, let us

remember that God is with us and we are with God. When your calendar or to-do list feels

overwhelming, turn to this breath prayer: Inhale, God is with me. Exhale, I am with God. This is

the promise and the hope, friends. 

Breathing with God-With-Us,

Pastor Sarah