Summer is beginning, and we are surrounded by the goodness of God’s creation! This is a season for time spent outside, soaking up the sunshine as we camp, play, visit “the lake” and refresh our bodies and spirits. During these summer months, Hennepin Church invites you to open your eyes to the presence of the Holy in your life through worship; through this devotional celebrating God’s movement in the natural world; and through educational opportunities designed to promote practical stewardship of God’s gifts and inspirational experiences of the Holy all around and through us.
Both as individuals and as a faith community, we seek to walk more closely with God. Church leadership has been discussing a ministry plan and tools that will help us to do just that in the coming months. One of these tools is the “Eight Characteristics” survey on the next page; we invite you to spend a quiet moment with the survey to think about your own spiritual life, and to use this devotional as a way of opening your eyes to God’s presence, of keeping your faith as green and growing and fully alive as the landscape around us.
That’s the invitation to each of us; the invitation for all of us is to focus on two goals from Hennepin’s newly-formed ministry plan: Cultivate Spiritual Vitality and Reach New People. These goals, along with the individual characteristics in the survey, correspond with the Eight Characteristics for United Methodist Christians in Minnesota offered by Bishop Sally Dyck:
- Having a personal, passionate faith
- Employing holy, healthy habits in your life
- Understanding your gifts, calling, and exhibiting generosity
- Being a church that is a community of disciples
- Having an evangelistic heart – a heart that tells the good news of God
- Maintaining healthy personal relationships
- Commitment to being a lifelong learner
- Sharing love for all God’s people
You can use the survey and the corresponding characteristics to determine your areas of greatest strength and places to grow. We hope you will take this devotional booklet along to the lake, on vacation, and wherever your summer takes you…and that, as summer draws to an end, we each may find that our eyes have been opened to the God who breathes through all Creation.
