What a difference a year makes…
This is a phrase we often hear when we reflect on something that happened 365 days ago. It might represent thoughts and feelings of evaluation, consternation, lamentation, and celebration.
Today, I am setting aside some time for meditation…on all of these things, because they each apply in some way to the loss we have felt over the past year.
It was one year ago today that our sister Autura got up to go about her day, not knowing it would be her last. I don’t know what specific things she did throughout the day before she drove her car that afternoon into the last place she thought she’d lose her life…her own driveway…but I can probably guess most of what she had accomplished.
Autura lived every day to the fullest. It was guaranteed that on any given day she would…
laugh with someone,
offer compassion to someone,
pray with and for someone,
be brought to tears listening to someone,
encourage someone,
and challenge someone.
Maybe you were one or more of those someone’s?
Autura was a Jesus-follower. I am grateful she was in the category of the Methodist variety of such disciples.
As I start my second year as your interim Superintendent in the Metro District, I am meditating on how Autura’s legacy lives on in my life and in our district.
I am meditating on…
what she left behind for me to do,
what she left for me to pick up and carry on,
what she is telling me to speak up and speak out about,
who she is telling me to sit down with and really listen to,
what does she want me to challenge that inspires the change for Christ that is needed in the world,
who needs me to laugh with them,
and who needs to be reminded that no matter how lost they may feel, how downtrodden they are, how unsure they are that anyone cares or notices them – that they, and we, remain…
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I shall meditate on these things, and much more, reflecting on the gifts I received from God in being a brother, a friend, and a colleague of the one-of-a-kind Autura Eason-Williams.
Rest in Peace, dear sister.
You fought the good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith.
Let us all keep running with perseverance the race that Christ has set before us…for His sake, and Autura’s.
Your Interim Metro District Superintendent,
Rev. Dr. David O. Weatherly