Whatever happened to the bird?
Have you ever noticed, in the photo that has long served as the church’s unofficial logo, that there’s a bird sitting on the cross? When I snapped the shutter from the window of my son Ryan’s second-floor bedroom, I really didn’t see the bird perched there. The mere sight of the morning sun rising behind the steeple was enough to warrant the making of a photo.
Still standing tall over downtown Waukon is the cross – a retirement gift to the congregation from a long-serving pastor, the Reverend A.H. Grossheim. Engraved on the cross are the names of the deacons and elders who served during Reverend Grossheim’s tenure from 1939 to 1955.
But whatever happened to the bird?
I suppose it did what birds do: fly away – maybe returning to a nearby nest, perhaps migrating thousands of miles away. Who knows what became of it? Yet, for a brief moment in time, the feathered stranger became a welcomed guest. And though it flew the coop, the bird nonetheless remains – in the 1/500th of a second click of a camera’s shutter, in the eyes of the faith community that it came to symbolize.
As I leave this place – fly away, if you will, please know that I take pieces of each of you with me – in those moments of time when you welcomed me, though a stranger, as a guest into your lives.
Thank you for inviting me to share in your joys: the births, the baptisms, the confirmations, the graduations, the weddings, the milestone birthdays and anniversaries. When times are festive, such invitations are easy to make. But it takes healthy measures of trust and courage to open the doors of your home and your heart when you’re feeling weak and weary.
So, thank you also for welcoming me, though a stranger, into your moments of vulnerability when life’s challenges and heartaches were simply too much to bear alone. When the diagnosis was grim, when the illness was acute, when death came calling. When a relationship was falling apart, when a layoff notice was received, when dreams were shattered. When the trauma was severe, when a bully’s taunts were unrelenting, when it felt like you didn’t have a friend in the world and no one cared.
Please know that it was an honor and a privilege to be invited into it all – the joys and the concerns, and everything in between. Thank you for the blessing of letting me be your pastor – and for the grace you extended whenever I “stepped in it.”
Still, the question remains: Whatever happened to the bird? Who’s to say?!
Maybe the better question for our moment is this: How were we blessed by our brief encounter?
Let the answers rest gently upon our hearts as sacred nourishment for the journey – wherever we may roam. And let us always hold fast to what was and is good.
To God be the glory!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this charge to the congregation during worship on Sunday, August 30, 2026 — his final Sunday in the pulpit before retirement.