Response at Installation Ceremony –
My response to you – my dear sisters in Christ – is to thank you from my heart for the opportunity to serve the Lord as your Director of Women’s Ministries.
When Bruce left to be with the Lord last June, I wondered what I was to do in the years he may still grant to me. My life this far has been lived in ministry – growing up in a pastor’s home, serving as a teacher and parish worker in NJ, and then as wife of a pastor for 34 years.
The only thing I knew to do, through the fog of grief was to listen to His familiar voice and to carefully place my feet, one step at a time and one day at a time in the footprints He left for me to follow.
And this is where He has led.
My confidence as His child is that He has not led me where
He will not enable me. His guidance comes packaged with His grace, and that
is enough.
So I commit to you to be your servant and His in the ministry by, through, and to the women of the CLB, with which He has entrusted us.
Music has always seemed the voice of my soul. Shortly after I began my work, my friends from my new church home in Billings sang a song which brought me to tears (familiar territory) because it voiced the trust I have in the One who never abandons His own, no matter how stormy the seas or how dark the night. Here are the words, by Grace Hawthorne:
Ride the Morning Winds, music by
Tom Fettke, c. 1980
A frightening place, this world
of ours, the frantic pace of changing powers,
Where no one plays familiar roles,
but in these days one promise holds:
I can ride the
morning winds and You are there.
I can sail the widest seas and
You are there.
I can find the darkest night
and You are there, Oh, Lord,
I can never be lost from You.
Decisions rise that must be made;
I compromise so debts are paid.
It’s all too much, I couldn’t
cope, but with Your touch I find new hope. (chor)
Please search me now and know my
heart;
Then show me how to do my part,
to walk the way You’d have me go,
And if I stray, Lord, still I
know…
I
can ride the morning winds and You are there.
I
can sail the widest seas and You are there.
I
can find the darkest night and You are there, Oh, Lord,
I can never be lost from You.
That same Lord is there beside you, as you listen and follow on your journey.
To Him be praise…always.
