“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” (Psalm 127:1, NIV)
We’ve written that verse so often on the walls of homes that we have built with Habitat for Humanity. I’ve just returned from a Habitat trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was the first trip that we’ve managed to send forth since just before the pandemic. It felt really good to once again be engaged in this ministry that has had so much importance to our congregation for so long. As we struggled to get three young adults who were able to join us for the week, we were quickly remembering the trips when youth, young adult, and adult teams would each go out with a dozen instead of a handful. It’s easy to look back at some time gone by and wistfully remember and become distracted from seeing how our God is a God who is active yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Our little group was amazing: in the work they did, in the witness that they offered to those around them, in the ways that they cared for one another as a model of beloved community. The experience was that longed-for reminder that God is at work in the here and now with the tools and people at hand. It’s the reminder to keep refocusing on how God is at work in this moment. That is and has always been the work of God's faithful, and it's often been hard work. I think of the Israelites in the wilderness complaining about what they’d left behind in Egypt – garlic, flesh-pots – somehow forgetting the part of the story that they were also stuck in a reality of slavery that was less than desirable.
We are invited to be laborers with this God all the time. We are reminded to look at the work we are doing and to ask how it is that we see God at work guiding the ministries in which we engage. Since the last newsletter, we’ve begun our monthly free community meals with some indication that momentum may grow. We’ve heard from members of the congregation celebrating the chance to gather and we’ve watched as new faces from the community have come in to find the love of God freely shared in food, hospitality, spirit. We saw familiar faces return for the holidays, even as we grieved not seeing others whose presence we’ve longed for. We’ve encountered blessings and God's mercy revealing itself among us in so many different ways. The path forward never seems to be quite what we’d expect, but it’s good.
When last I wrote, I was sharing about our German exchange pastor joining us at the beginning of the year. Well, as yet another reminder of our strained immigration system, we are now hoping that all of the hurdles for his visa will have been cleared for him to be able to arrive at the beginning of March. Once he joins us, we will have the blessing of sharing in ministry with him for 12 months. I would have hoped that the time had already begun… but God is also in the waiting, and God will be in the arriving.
Soon we will reenter the season of Lent. We’ll turn again to Holden Evening Prayer, but now with an added personal connection of having Berit working at Holden Village for the year. As we gather for Ash Wednesday, Laura and I will have just returned from that retreat community in the Cascade mountains with new visions of the place that birthed this beloved musical setting of vespers. As we continue through Lent we’ll be hearing from this year’s confirmands with their insights and wisdom.
At each step along the way we are invited to pause and look for where God is leading us. And we are to remember that the path isn’t supposed to be merely of our own creation but rather the one which God is building, for otherwise it will all be in vain. May God bless us each in celebrating this day and all that God is doing with us and through us. Shalom,
Pastor Eric