Journey Through
How great it was to hear from our Missions Team over the past month and be reminded of our part in the great mission story that is unfolding from Heaven! Now the digital, Friday pen is back in my hand and I want to draw your attention to our current journey for a moment. Some of my favorite books as a young lad were Anne DeVries' series Journey Through the Night, which followed a Dutch family in Nazi occupied Holland during WW2. Four hard years. Four years of struggle. I have thought of them often as we have navigated our hard year during the pandemic. It is truly a journey.
I want to specifically encourage you today with two things. The first is that the last several months have seen hopeful progress with regards to our life together. We have been able to safely maintain worship together in ways that particularly respected the most vulnerable. Recently we have reopened nurseries and added indoor singing. Bible studies are being offered via Zoom and in person. Youth activities have resumed. As immunizations rise and Covid cases fall we are looking at increasing service sizes and returning to more and more pre-pandemic programming. I say especially to those who feel fatigued, perhaps feeling that you have been stretched to your breaking point and NEED some fellowship, NEED some help with kids, etc... Take heart. We believe that our journey is heading in a healthy direction. I would also encourage us as a community to hold the line here at the last. Don't give out. We do have obstacles to overcome yet. We do want to do our very best to care for the most vulnerable. We also have our building project to navigate, which regardless of the pandemic would hamper some programming. We are journeying.
The second thing to encourage you with is in regard to our own personal journeys the Lord has us on. Jim Weaver is a team leader with Mission to the World and he created and shared this image. What I love about this image is the way it charts our personal journeys from fear to growth. He of course is zeroing in on our responses to the pandemic, but we could put any challenging aspect of life in the bulls-eye and chart what the journey looks like from fear to growth. Can you find yourself in your journey?
Of course we will never grow in our journeys unless we cling to Jesus. Our text this week reminds us from Jesus' own lips that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). He is the Path on which we journey. He invites us to believe him and to trust him as he prepares our way to the Father.
So let's hold fast together to Jesus. Let's navigate these months ahead with patience that only he can provide.
Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Unsplash