I can remember when I turned 21. I had just returned from Nigeria, West Africa from a summer with Experiment in International Living. Part of that summer had been spent in Aba in Eastern Nigeria living with a Yoruba family. We had visited Northern Nigeria as a group. I never imagined the connection I would later feel with the Church of the Brethren in Northern Nigeria. Twenty-one is a kind of magic number in the US with both legal and cultural issues attached to it. It is a marker of full adulthood for all of us. For some of my contemporaries it meant that they could legally drink alcohol. That did not fit my lifestyle. It was also at the time the legal age for voting. Even then I thought it was strange that one could go into the armed services at eighteen and fight in a war, but could not legally vote. There was a new level of rights and responsibilities that had been opened up. Frankly, I didn’t feel any older or more mature than I had the day before, but in a few years I was married and working as a minister. I had worked hard to prepare for my work, but I was still very inexperienced. I now marvel at the grace extended to me by my first congregation. Many in the church were wiser and more experienced, but they listened to me and helped me grow as a person and as a minister. Today as I wrote a check with the date 2021, I wondered whether this could be somehow symbolic. Certainly this is a year with new responsibility and new opportunity. We are just beginning to emerge from a time of chaos and uncertainty. Will we be up for the challenge of 21? Can we find maturity and community to respond to the new situations? I am sure that at 21 years of age there was more potential than achievement. For the year 2021 can we move from potential to achievement together? God willing with our best effort this can be the year we all hope for. .