Pastor Gravrock's Message

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

My father was born in his family’s home in Everett, Washington. As a pastor, he visited countless people in the hospital, but he was always the visitor. When he was 69 years old, he had hernia surgery, and for the first time, he was a hospital patient.

He was admitted to the hospital the night before his scheduled surgery (the norm in those days). Jean and I went to see him. When we walked into the room, there was my father sitting in the chair beside the bed, fully clothed. Seeing our surprise, he said that he couldn’t bring himself to get into the bed since he was always the one who sat beside it. (Needless to say, he did get into the bed, had the surgery, and was just fine thereafter.)

Now it is my turn. Through 38 years of parish ministry, I have visited many people before and after surgery or when hospitalized following accidents or during illnesses. It has been my privilege to speak God’s words of presence and to join the patients in prayers for healing or for release. But I have always been the visitor and not the patient. (My only previous surgery was a tonsillectomy at age 2.)

On the 10th of July, I will be having surgery to remove my prostate. I will spend the remainder of the summer in recovery. I am planning—God willing—to lead worship and preach again on August 3, but I will not likely be at full speed again until at least Rally Day.

What will God teach me through this hospitalization and recovery period? How will this “down time” bless me? How will you be blessed in the events of your lives this summer? I don’t know the answers yet, but I do know that God is always present to us and ever shapes us in love according to his purposes.

As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome:

We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

So, sisters and brothers, let us take the adventure God gives us this summer, knowing that God is with us each step of the way.

Pastor Gravrock