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Surprises

I remember watching my son run in the Big Sur River Run in the wooded Big Sur area of California. At one point during the event, I discovered a string trio playing beautiful classical music, encouraging the stream of runners flowing by.

The trio was a surprise.

Recently, while reading The First World War by Hew Strachen, I discovered pages of color photographs taken by French photographers during the war. The autochrome color process, I learned, was invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1903 and commercialized in 1907. Its secrets are now lost, but it relied on potato starch particles dyed in green, orange, and violet applied to a glass plate. The exposure took ten seconds, but the results were remarkable. Color photography before 1920?

I was surprised.

Surprise is one of life's ingredients, the moment that changes the day's expectations and extends the limits of one's knowledge.

In ministry, surprises come to all of us. Some are small, some large, some positive, some negative. When surprises adjust our lives, we may need the music of relaxation and encouragement in order to press on.

For 25 years Lutheran Partners has been, we hope, the "music" of a faithful encourager of harmony, conversation, and steadfast faith. The magazine hopes to keep encouraging while we all keep running.

Carl E. Linder was Lutheran Partners' editor from 1987-2002.