AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HOPE

It was one of those news blurbs that comes and goes rather quickly. Brian Williams enunciated it and then moved on to something else, but I did hear it and my heart sank when I did. It was simply this – the tour of duty for all soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan has been extended by fifteen months. So if you are a young man or woman with a family back home, perhaps with a young child or two who is without mommy or daddy right now, and if you were anticipating a homecoming in May or June or July, you are now facing another year or more in military service in one of the most unstable environments in the world.

I saw Tom Brokaw on the Letterman show some time ago. Dave asked Tom what we can do, expressing the fact that we as American citizens feel so helpless at times. Brokaw suggested that the best thing we can do is reach out to the families of the soldiers who are currently serving (or have served) in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news in April that their tour of duty is extended must have been a tremendous emotional blow to these family members, a real gut punch. It bothered me; I can’t imagine what it must have done to them.

I want to thank the fine work of Shaun Tauber, Gretchen Montee, and our Middle School youth who prepared cards and letters and little “packages of appreciation” and sent them to a company in Iraq. They found something they could do for the soldiers. But I want to focus our attention as a congregation on a ministry to the families. They are out there (and I’m sure some right among us), quietly hurting and aching. They are the brother of the young woman I know from confirmation classes at Bay View years ago, a young woman I see only occasionally when checking out at Wal-Mart. Buying something at Wal-Mart and standing in her check-out line is the only opportunity I have to hear her Iraq story.

These hurting families are likely not aware of each other. They are living without any visible means of support, except from other family members or close friends. Can we do anything to reach out to these families in our county? I have some ideas. I ask you to contribute yours, shifting our focus for ministry at Hope in the coming months to these folks, to the families of soldiers who are currently serving, or have recently served, in Iraq and Afghanistan. There must be something we can do to let these people know that we care about them. I still recall the way we rallied as we anticipated busloads of refugees coming from New Orleans in the wake of Katrina’s destructive path. This is certainly a storm of another kind, a storm that leaves a wake of emotional devastation in its path.

I urge you all to add discussions about this to your board and committee meetings, to wonder together what we might do, and then to invite the whole congregation to rally around efforts to let these families in Door County know that we are thinking about them and praying for them. And yes, I am adding them, whomever they may be, to our prayer list. We have an opportunity to live out our namesake. Let’s do it with passion and the very grace of God.

                                                                        - Pastor Vance Toivonen