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What year it is
for us living in and around the Flathead Reservation. This year marks
the 100th year since reservation lands were opened to general settlement
and the beginning of so much of our recent history. Events to
commemorate the anniversary are springing up all over our part of
western Montana and I had the honor of participating in one just this
last weekend. The Port Polson players put on "Valley Full of Diamonds",
a musical celebration of Polson history first put on 25 years ago when
Polson was 75 years old. If you didn't catch the production this year
you might have a chance in 2035!
Our
congregations will be celebrating their own beginnings over the coming
year. The Presbyterian Church in Polson was founded in June of 1910;
the Dayton congregation soon followed in February of 1911. The Polson
congregation's primary
celebration will be
July 10 through 11
(read on in the Pulse for details). The Dayton congregation will
celebrate its centennial next summer. How great is that! Our Parish
will get to celebrate our centennial twice!
All this
celebration has me thinking about roots and how our future is shaped by
our past. As a part of the Hebrews' celebration of the harvest each
year each family would present an offering of their first crops to God.
While doing this, they would recite a creed of sorts – a brief
remembrance of where they had come from and what God had done for their
people. That's what we find in the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy
(it's at the top of this column.)
Do you notice how
that remembrance is all about thanksgiving and God's actions? That's
where we begin our time of celebration and remembrance. We set out with
hearts full of thanksgiving, remembering and reflecting on what God has
done, and is doing, among us. It was God's actions which shaped God's
people. The same is true for us. We are shaped by God's actions among
us and through us. As we celebrate the past over these coming two years
we'll be remembering God's faithfulness to our parents and grandparents,
resting on the promise of God's continued presence with us, striving to
be faithful to the future with which God blesses us. May God give us
clear memories and clear vision for the future.
Shalom,
Dave
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