Carried or Sent? Part 2

 This is the second part of a devotional I gave at a meeting last week.

We are living in a pandemic.  I am so ready for that not be the case, but it is.  We are living in a time of fear.  A time of mourning and grief.  A time of anger. We have not been sent here by God, but we have been carried by God.

 

I’m reading a book called The Missional Leader: Equipping your church to reach a changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.  They write, “In the incarnation, we discern that God is always found in what appears to be the most godforsaken of places – the most inauspicious of locations, people, and situations….Over and over again, God meets God’s people with the bright light of the Kingdom in what appears to be the most hopeless and forsaken places.”  Through a prophet, God asks, “Can these dry bones live?” and then God answers the question by sending us Jesus.  The answer is yes.  The dry bones lives because God is with us.

 

God was with the people in exile, and God tells them to live.  Get married, have children, have grandchildren.  Live.  Bring life to where you are. 

 

God is with us in this pandemic, and tell us to live.  To do ministry.  To love each other.  To bring life to where we are.  Here in this place, where God is, we are still the church.  We need new skills, and we need to use gifts differently, but that doesn’t mean we have an excuse to do nothing. 

 

A few years ago, I was part of a committee that was trying to standardize the certified lay minister program in our conference.  We couldn’t envision a way to do it.  But now, I’m teaching a Conference CLM course – all online.  In a way we didn’t – couldn’t have – envisioned.  The students – at least some of them – don’t have the equipment they need, or the internet they need, and yet they are doing this anyway.  They borrow a friend’s computer, they find internet, they show up every month for a 2.5 hour zoom class.  They do the portico lectures, they read the books, they struggle through curriculum, and they write answers to hard questions.  In a land where they didn’t expect to be, they are living life – following God’s call.  And they are telling me that they couldn’t have done this without the class being held online.  They couldn’t have traveled for in person meetings.  This could not have happened before the pandemic.

 

So, I ask you today, in this land where God has carried you, where have you seen God at work?   Where are you or the people in your community, living life in a way no one anticipated before?