Dear Beloved Community,
Fifteen years ago this very night, Josh and I gathered with our nearest and dearest to commit our lives to each other. We made all the promises you make when you’re young(ish) and in love, and asked our beloved friends and family and community to hold us to it, to encourage us in our covenant with every passing year. Fifteen years later, I love him more than I did on that gorgeous early fall night in Louisville. Life and work and relationships and challenges have pressed on our vows, no question. But again and again, we choose each other and choose this life together that we’re building.
I suppose you could say I have anniversaries on the brain – and not just my own.
Because in just a couple of weeks, our church family will kick off a nine-month celebration of our 100 years in place – 100 years of discipleship and worship, of service and care, of accompanying each other through all the changing seasons of life, of together with God, tending this spot on 501 West Fifth Street that we call home. In this screen-driven, isolated and fractured, individualized and optimized and sanitized context, I don’t suppose I need to make a case to you for why communal, sacred spaces matter deeply – to us as individuals and as a collective. (But if I do, come share in worship this fall! We’ll be talking about it.)
Yet perhaps you’re wondering – didn’t we just celebrate the church’s 150th anniversary a few years ago? (Yes, in 2022! Only a year delayed because of covid.) Why do we need to celebrate the anniversary of the building when we just celebrated the anniversary of the people?
I’m glad you asked.
For many of the same reasons that we mark anniversaries of our marriages or our work, anniversaries of graduations or moves, anniversaries of sobriety from addiction or a major disentanglement in your life, anniversaries of baptisms or friendships, anniversaries of births and deaths, so too should we celebrate the anniversary of our life together in place! Anniversaries remind us of where we’ve been, giving us space to look back and take stock, while stoking both our gratitude for what’s been and our hope for what’s to come. In short, anniversaries help us remember.
And in a day and age that moves at lightning speed, when lessons of the past seem forgotten in the dustbins of history, when we struggle to remember even ourselves amidst all the demands of a life, pausing to remember fortifies us. It gifts us with reflection and renewal, often at precisely the time we need it, and knits us to each other as we mark this milestone. Anniversaries recommit us to a relationship, a community, a cause, a decision, a life, a church. Anniversaries encourage us, once again, to choose to invest in what we’re remembering with gratitude.
Over the months ahead, our 100th Anniversary Task Force has planned monthly gatherings to do just that – to hear stories from this place (if these walls could talk!) and her people, to go from 501 West Fifth again and again into the neighborhood we so love, to invite friends and neighbors to join us right here, to tend this place for such a time as this. We hope you’ll make your plans now to join us for the celebrations! You can find more on our website here: https://firstonfifth.org/100onfifth/
Happy anniversary, First on Fifth! (And Josh too! ♥️)
Together in God’s work of Love,
Emily