Pastoral Letter: Everyday Surrounded by Gracious Powers-Longing for God’s Community
Beloved SUM Family,
Today I met people who love God—and because they love God, they love the church Christ has established. Some prepared Sunday worship with quiet care, adjusting what would help grace be felt. Others, after months of prayer, put the final touches on Rally Day so members and neighbors can rejoice with meaning. Our hospitality team prepared welcoming food and refreshments. Still others studied for coming ministries while musicians gathered, aligning breath and heart to praise God.
Through them I remembered again: the church is not a building—it is people, entrusted and sent. When we offer our time and gifts, pray, and listen to Scripture, the living face of SUM becomes visible.
The day passed quickly—emails answered, conversations shared, decisions made, steps taken. On the way home, my children rode their bikes ahead of me, looking back now and then to be sure I was still coming. The cool breeze and the evening-painted sky renewed my tired heart. In an ordinary moment, God’s presence. The day itself became grace.
Later that evening, as I sat to write, Bonhoeffer’s prison poem *Von guten Mächten came to mind. He wrote it for his fiancée and family at the threshold of the New Year 1945—warm, hopeful, everyday language for those he loved. It carries the hope of a new year and the dream of a church filled with Christ’s love and peace. Yet it was born within the limits of a cell: he could not share daily life with those he loved; the church meant to share faith was fracturing; many were swept up in violence and disordered desire, far from the way of Christ. Even so, he confessed trust in the good powers of God.
From that confession, a picture of the church emerges:
● A people surrounded by gracious powers, holding one another steady in fear and uncertainty.
● A community that remembers God in the evening and in the morning, offering each day back to God.
● A fellowship where warm and bright candles pierce the night—comfort shared in one another’s darkness.
● A quiet that becomes listening, where we hear the invisible world’s praise—the hymn of all God’s children.
● A people who await each new day in trust—and, together, step into it.
Today I glimpsed those pieces in the faces of our SUM family—the hands preparing worship, the feet that have walked and prayed for Rally Day, the kitchen and hospitality crew setting tables and food, the smiles aligning in rehearsal as voices lift one another. We are already becoming a church sheltered by gracious powers—embracing each other, crossing night into morning, and welcoming God’s new day together.
As we keep to the means of grace—Word, table, prayer, and fellowship—may this trust take flesh among us.
There is, finally, one reason we prepare, pray, and labor with such devotion: God is with us—and we trust the future God will bring.
My prayer:
“Holy God, surround our SUM family with your good and gracious powers. Be with us in our service and labor, in our joys and our tears. In the evening, in the morning, and in every new day, teach us to trust you. Give us courage to serve, hope to look forward, and joy to walk together into your future. Amen.”
This Sunday, Rally Day, I believe God’s presence will be revealed among us in a special way. Please remember: one combined worship service at 10:00 AM. Bring your family, neighbors, and friends. Let us come together—sheltered by gracious powers—and joyfully step into the new day God has prepared.
With love in Christ,
Pastor DH
*Appendix - English Translation (literal rendering for reading/meditation)
1
Surrounded by good powers, faithful and still,
wonderfully guarded and consoled,
I mean to live these days now with you
and go with you into a new year.
2
Yet the old year still would trouble our hearts,
the heavy weight of evil days still press.
Ah Lord, grant to our startled souls
the saving health for which you fashioned us.
3
And if you hand to us the heavy, bitter cup
of suffering, filled up to the very brim,
we take it thankfully, without a tremor,
from your good and well-beloved hand.
4
But if you will to grant us once again
the joy of this world and the brightness of its sun,
then we shall hold the bygone in remembrance,
and then our life will wholly be your own.
5
Let warm and bright the candles burn today,
the ones you have brought into our dark;
and, if it may be, gather us together again.
We know it: your light shines in the night.
6
And when the silence spreads now deep around us,
let us hear that full and vibrant sound
of the world that widens, though unseen, about us—
the lofty hymn of praise of all your children.
7
Wonderfully sheltered by good powers,
we wait with trust for whatever may come.
God is with us at evening and at morning—
surely, on every new day.