Friends,

In lieu of my normal devotion, I thought I would give you some bits of important news, and the text of an especially good devotion that was offered by James Reily at the beginning of the last vestry meeting.

-Nick

Farewell Kyle Munroe

Kyle Munroe is a student at Virginia Theological Seminary and as the school year comes to end, so does his time with us! This is his last Sunday, and we will have some parting gifts for him. Kyle has been incredibly faithful and devoted to St. Luke’s. He has a strong drive to do effective ministry, and his earnest approach gives me hope in the future of the Church. I encourage you to come this Sunday so you can thank him for his selfless ministry!

(Almost) Farewell to Sue Bentley

Sue has been our Parish Administrator for eleven years, and she is retiring effective April 30th! We are going to celebrate her ministry on Sunday May 3rd at the morning services and then at a reception following the 10:00 am service. Sue has been my go-to expert on all things St. Luke’s since I arrived, and it will feel bizarre without her here! We will hire a replacement for the admin position very soon. We are re-structuring the staff, and the new admin will have a different job description, but they will still function as the central nervous system of the congregation. Everything is in transition right now, and I would like to humbly suggest that you leave non-urgent matters for the new admin once they get spun-up, and to focus and expressing your gratitude for Sue’s amazing ministry!

New Ministry Coordinator

Did you know that we have an endowment at St. Luke’s? It is an incredible gift, and when it was set up, it was stipulated that it could only be spent on very specific things, one of them being starting new ministries. There is so much potential to grow the ministries of St. Luke’s, and we have many great ideas floating around and very little time to make them happen. I approached the endowment committee, proposed an idea, and I am thrilled it is coming to fruition. Using funds from the endowment we going to hire a temporary employee who will work thirty hours a week for six months, and their only job will be to get new ministries off the ground. The largest project will be a parent’s morning out program that we hope to have running by late summer or early fall. Standby for more information soon!

Junior Warden, James Reily’s Devotion from the Vestry Meeting on April 19, 2026

Last Friday the astronauts from Artemis II splashed down after the historic trip around the moon that started with a launch some of you may have watched live during our final Lenten burger night.

This trip mirrored one taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968 an incredibly tumultuous year in our history. That was the year of the funeral for Robert F Kennedy, the assassination of Marting Luther King Jr. the nomination of Richard Nixon by the GOP as their next presidential candidate. That was also the year of the Tet Offensive, the lowest point of the Vietnam War, the year that Walter Cronkite told us the war was unwinnable.

In contrast, the message from the astronauts that year was overwhelmingly positive. In the face of humanity's (indeed all of earth's) seeming insignificance compared with the void of space, they turned to their religious tradition and love. This type of feeling among astronauts, as their perspective ascends literally and figuratively above the day-to-day squabbles of earth, is so prevalent it has a name: "the overview effect."

Just last week during that Artemis mission we saw an example of this. One of the Artemis astronauts, Victor Glover's statement shares this perspective. As they rounded the backside of the moon and it was about to cover all things important to him and indeed all of us; the site of all empires, nations, discoveries, tragedies, celebrations, victories, defeats, lives, and deaths of all humans ever save his three crewmates he stated, "Thank you to all of you for allowing us the immense privilege to be on this journey together; it's quite amazing... as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that is love. Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are, and he also, being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it and that is 'to love your neighbor as yourself.' And so, as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we're still going to feel your love from Earth and to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you, from the Moon."

While I don't think I will ever experience the overview effect for myself, I think we all experience the same result of that effect at our most precious moments here at St. Lukes, namely love for our creator, love for our fellow men and women. And that is why we serve on the vestry and do the other things to make this place what it is, to nurture the seed growing in this Parish, in this community. To love the lord God and to love one another as ourselves.