Hope Celebrates 7 Years!

This morning HOPE UMC congregation celebrated our 7 years of being Hope UMC. As you may remember my telling you before, two struggling congregations went together in Sept., 2001 to become one (Woodland and University). A few months later we renamed ourselves Hope UMC, after voting on many name possibilities. Our pastor this morning mentioned that maybe we chose Hope because our coming together was on the first Sunday after the 9/11 tragedy of the Twin Towers. It was our first Sunday to worship together, it was bittersweet because we were all still in shock over the tragedy that had happened earlier in the week. We grieved together for all those lost and all those affected, as well as worshipped together. Our pastors at the time, were very good at helping us deal with what had happened. Our pastor this morning talked about 9-11 as well as talking about our anniversary. His sermon this morning was on “Forgiveness”, the scripture was from Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unmerciful servant. He talked about the anger he still feels about 9/11, how he thought he had “forgiven”, but often realizes that he has not, and how many of us have probably experienced the same thing at one time or another, in our lives. Thinking that we have forgiven, but in our hearts, we really haven’t. We have to remind ourselves to forgive, as God forgives us.

We celebrated our 7th Anniversary by renewing our Baptism vows. I thought that was very appropriate and very touching.