New Beginnings

(this post comes from Carrie Bowers, our Interim Director of Christian Education)

I look at the faces in these pictures and I smile. I can’t help it! I smile thinking about what an amazing time they had a camp this year, what great friendships they made and built upon, what gifts and skills they discovered that they didn’t even know they had. From so many of our children, I’ve heard first hand how Reinhardt is one of the things they anticipate and look forward to all year. Year after year, it is an experience that has been faithful to them . . . living up to their expectations.

Over the past few weeks and months I’ve heard so many express their hopes, dreams and expectations for the Chapel renovation. It’s not even December and yet, Advent is among us! Already this summer we’ve watched with great expectation as walls have come down, the roof has been replaced and windows have appeared.

Looking at these pictures of our children at Reinhardt, I can only hope that this Chapel renovation will provide for them, too, a place where relationships continue to be formed, strengthened and nourished. I pray that it will be a place where gifts they didn’t even know they had are uncovered and unearthed. I trust that it will be a place where faith is formed, molded and shaped. I expect that it will be a place that provides them with the community they need to thrive long before they enter youth group and high school.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us all of what seems so unexpected, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11: 6) It is my greatest hope that this Chapel renovation will provide the place and space for the children in our midst to lead us all as they faithfully follow God’s call in their own lives.