Temporary.
Not permanent.
It won’t last long.
The theological side of my brain says “temporary” is a dumb word, a word that doesn’t say anything, because absolutely every human arrangement is temporary. Not permanent. Won’t last long. There is simply no such thing as permanent, so why bother having either of these words, really.
Take my office, for example. When I came here in January, 2003, I had a great office, the best, really—large, functional, with a great view—and it got better when Cimar Duarte installed a very nice wood laminate floor in it.
Turns out it was temporary. By 2010 our finances were difficult, my connection with the school suffered from being in a location remote from the teachers and students, and Lutheran Services of Florida wanted to rent space from us—“my” space! So I took two days and built myself an office in the old workroom behind the former Senior Pastor’s office. We were expecting to build a new CDC, and I told Gary O’Rourke I’d be in that temporary office one year, two years max. I still owe him a wing dinner over that!
Three years later, this past July, we figured out that we could add 12 infants to our CDC if I moved out of that office, and 7 other offices and classrooms also moved—so we did that. I had a nice new space on the second floor of the Ministry Center, where the old conference room had been.
For almost three months! Yesterday I moved my books, desk, and other office things downstairs in the Ministry Center, to be stored (temporarily) until my next office (I’ve learned not to say “permanent”) is available next week, God willing. We figured out that if we make this set of moves, we won’t have to bring portables onto the field to start the construction of the new building. This time we’re moving more than a dozen of our own offices, plus almost all of our tenants.
Since I also live in temporary quarters (Lisa and I have been in the “orange apartment,” which has faded to salmon now, for over two years now) until the houses are moved and a “parsonage” becomes available, my life feels pretty temporary on all sides!
That’s not so bad. In fact, it might be a really good thing! Do you remember that God gave the Israelites a holiday called the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles? It’s in the Bible. For seven days each year the Hebrew people lived in little shelters made of branches on their roofs or in their courtyards, to remind themselves of the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Orthodox Jews still build these “booths” each year to this very day.
Jesus owned no property. He told someone who wanted to be his disciple that he “had no place to lay his head.”
The book of Hebrews makes a pretty big deal of the temporary nature of our human lives, too, focusing on the contrast between earthly, temporary life and heavenly permanence. We are actually supposed to feel unsettled, because that feeling helps us long for our heavenly home. Temporary is good for our souls.
That being said, please pray for our Trinity staff and our volunteer leaders. It’s really difficult to work when you literally don’t know where you’ll be tomorrow. Right now we’re scrambling to find places to store things that currently are in places that won’t exist a month or so from now. It is really unsettled here! That’s good, but it’s hard. Please pray for us!
All this is the result of things moving quickly toward groundbreaking. As of this moment we expect to be moving the houses in October and breaking ground in November. Years of planning are finally coming together—it’s becoming very real!
So pray for us, and don’t forget your pledges to the Faithfully Forward campaign. Those dollars really need to flow in on schedule, please!
And if you’re struggling with similar issues of lack of permanence, give me a call, or talk to someone on staff. We can really identify with you, and may be able to help!
– Pastor Moore
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