Hello,

Sorry to be a couple of days late on this week’s Bungee Cord. I am on the road visiting my folks and my three boys….Davenport, Denver, Charlotte, and Brooklyn. I left on Monday and will be back home after 2 ½ weeks . Gonna put some miles on my Mini.

As you may recall, I officially retired Sept. 1, and so as I thought about what I was going to do in my retirement, I decided to establish my priorities. First, set my faith life in order. Second, put my relationship with my wife as a top priority, and third, spend some time with my kids and grandson. After these things everything else is far less important.

So, the first Sunday that I was out of the pulpit, I attended worship at the church to which I belong. I sat in the pews. Prayed. Sang songs of praise. Listened to the Word of God in the readings and in the sermon. Put an offering of thanks in the collection plate, and received communion. At that service, one of the guys, who is 83, asked me if I would help him with a project he was doing around the church. He is replacing the rail road ties that border the parking lot, at least 20 of them, with cement curbing that he is mixing and pouring himself. I told him that I have never worked with concrete before, but he said that didn’t matter. So, I found myself last week mixing eighty pound bags of cement and pouring them into forms that we set up. We got six done, and then unfortunately (lol) I had to leave on my road trip for 2 ½ weeks. A rather back aching way to engage myself in the life of my congregation.

A couple of weeks into September, before my cement work, Kate and I took a vacation to the Blue Ridge mountains in Georgia. We spent five days there with some friends, spent a good while on the road together, and remembered how great it is to be married to each other for 41 years.

And now, I am making my way across the country and back to spend time with my folks who are 90 and not doing very well, and spend some days with each of my sons. It is going to be a lot of time on the road by myself, but each stop will give me a chance to spend some individual time with each son who I don’t get to see that much because of the distance we live apart from each other. All three of them have taken on life with gusto, and it is fun to see them turning into wonderful young men. My oldest, who lives in Denver, told me that we are going into the mountains and that I need to wear flannel (I don’t know why. It is supposed to be a surprise. My middle son, who lives in Charlotte, is taking on a new challenge of adventure, and I am excited to hear about it. My youngest, who lives in Brooklyn, and who is the father of my grandson, always broadens my mind (and thins my wallet) when we go out on the town.

That is how I have started my retirement….put first things first. Interestingly enough, that is also how God started his eternal relationship with me. Just a couple of months after I entered this world, God personally visited me, naming me as his own in the waters of Baptism, gowned me in grace, sealing me in divine love and mercy, making his home in my heart, and embracing me in a hug that nothing can sever. When God considered how he was going to spend eternity, God put first things first, and visited me. And since that first visit, God has visited my life day after day….forgiving me for the pain that I have brought him, opening my heart to the pain that I have brought upon others and shaping my heart with his love so that I might bring love and not pain to my neighbors, picking me up when I have fallen flat on my face, giving me eyes to see how I might use the gifts that he has given me to bring a blessing to the world, standing between me and those who would want to hurt me, bringing a light of hope into the darkness that sometimes engulfs me, and laughing with me at death who will find out that it cannot have me.

That is the way that God works. God puts first things first when God thinks about eternity, and thanks be to God that the first thing on God’s list is you and me.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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