From the Pulpit: Take a moment to recognize what God is doing
Friends in the Community,
Greetings to each and every one of you from God our loving heavenly Father and our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that this article finds all of you well now that we are entering into the month of September. I am so excited to get to write a few articles and share some ideas with you this month.
As I thought about what to mention in my article this week, I took a few minutes to think about what I have seen taking place in our community related to faith the last few weeks. The first think I thought of was the community prayer breakfast that took place on Aug. 21. I want to tell you this is an amazing event! I have served in many different communities, and I have never seen an event like this one. It is awesome to see the congregations and the school come together to pray and share God’s love with one another. This is an amazing way to start the school year. It also sets an example for our students and families. We showed people that we can come together as people with different theologies, ideologies and backgrounds, to worship and serve our God as one in the body of Christ. We are living at a time when this message needs to be sent loud and clear. Too many times, we are defined by our differences and divisions. It was great to see the unity in Christ that was shared that morning.
Another event that took place in the last few weeks was a pastoral lunch. There were a few Brandon pastors who got together for lunch. During this time, we shared our lives, but we also talked about what God is doing in our community at this time. We discussed how the Holy Spirit is moving. It was an amazing conversation. There was laughter and serious conversation. It was a good time for us to come together for just a few moments, not to compete or to compare, but to support and to share Christ’s love with one another.
As I process these events, I am giving thanks to God for what he is doing in our community right now. It is a great time for us to live in this place. We are seeing growth and change. We are seeing new things happening all around us, and it is awesome to see these wonderful things.
It is also more than awesome to see what God is doing among us in this place right now. Some of us are new to this place and have not seen some of these things happen before. It is cool to be able to see churches get so excited about being together and having moments of worship and conversation with one another. It is good to share our unity in the body of Christ and to be able to not only tell people we are one in this body but to also live out what we are saying. Words can only do so much. Actions speak much louder.
I hope and pray that you are taking at least a few moments once in a while to recognize what God is doing among us. As you take time to reflect upon this, I would invite you to give thanks to God for his goodness to us and to all of his children. Along with giving thanks to God for these great gifts, I would also encourage you to have a conversation with someone from a different congregation in our community. Take the time to listen to one another and to pray with each other. As we all do this together, we really do affirm our places as members of the one body of Jesus Christ who is the Lord and Savior of each and every one of us.
Just a thought…
