Jacob Sahms

Every year at the 4th of July, I think about Independence Day. I don’t mean the holiday; I mean the larger-than-life Will Smith movie where a handful of Earth’s pilots and misfits fight off an alien invasion. They are up against impossible odds but they must prevail: the future of Earth is at stake!

In our Beatitude today, Jesus says that the meek will inherit the earth. The future of the world isn’t in the hands of the proud, the brave, or the rich in Jesus’ teaching, but in the hands of the meek.

So what in the world does it mean to be meek?

Adam Hamilton, Church of the Resurrection’s pastor, used this example from a parishioner once to explain meekness. “My mom isn’t a follower of Christ and looks nothing like the beatitudes. Fortunate are poor in spirit? My mother knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. She has no hope beyond having more right now. Fortunate are the meek? My mother treats everything like a battle with winners and losers. She seeks to be a winner which looks nothing like the gentleness you spoke of in meekness. Fortunate are the merciful? My mother has a condescending personality and keeps score. She seeks revenge, not justice. She is poisoned by hate. It’s all about her. My mother is suffering in a spiritless hopeless world. She has no hope, only the cross of cynicism to bear. You get the picture. Her life is the opposite of the beatitudes. It is misery.”

Another story I read once shared about a truly obnoxious woman who decided that she was going on a cruise, but none of her friends would go along. Behind her back, they said it was her “me first” attitude. When she arrived at the ticket counter, she barged past the people standing there, whipping her suitcase around, yelling “Me first!” When it was time for dinner the first night, she elbowed others out of the way, shouting “Me first!”

But on the second day, the cruise ran aground between destinations, and the captain of the cruise informed the passengers that they would be ferried to shore or that they’d have to swim. He started to load the elderly and the children on, but the woman practically knocked him overboard, stuffing her suitcase on the lifeboat, grumpily muttering, “Me first!”

After three days, the passengers were shellshocked and scared they’d never be rescued, but rustling in the jungle nearby revealed a band of natives, who gestured at the shipwrecked crew with their spears and motioned that they should follow. The woman screamed, “Me first!” and charged after them.

Back at their village, the natives warmed large pots of water, making feeding gestures toward the passengers and the pots. Soon, they motioned the passengers toward the pots, and our favorite shipwreck-ee screamed, “Me first!”

And the cannibals threw her into the pot.

We know what meekness is by its absence, but why do we struggle to wrap our minds around it?

One day in a theology class at SMU, the theological giant Dallas Willard found himself belittled and heckled by one of his students in a lecture hall in front of several hundred students. After the young man had gone on about the shortcomings of both Willard and the university, Willard calmly raised his hand and spoke to the class. “I think it’s time for us to call it a day. See you all tomorrow.”

An hour later, several faculty members found Willard working quietly in his office. They burst in, having heard the story of the student and Willard’s non-response from other students. “We heard what happened to you earlier,” one of them exclaimed. “Why didn’t you shut that kid down?”

“I’m practicing not having the last word,” Willard responded, with a smile on his face.

That was simply all he had to say.

Ah, meekness. I would like to be meek – it’s certainly a character trait that would improve my blood pressure! But while I have practiced Willard’s ‘not having the last word’ … I never make it longer than twenty-four hours!

What is it about meekness that is so hard?

In Galatians, Paul lists meekness as one of the Fruits of the Spirit, along with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. While the first is generally considered a necessary mark of a Christian, we struggle to incorporate those other attributes into our relationships even with people we love or like. 

But Paul (and Jesus) tell us over and over again to pursue life humbly – to serve others and to elevate them higher than we see ourselves.

Paul expands on Jesus’ teaching and example, but how many times do we stop and consider Jesus’ humility?

Jesus washed his disciples feet, an action reserved for slaves or servants, not for the leader of a group.

Jesus ate with and cared for people who others considered unlovable, too sinful, or beneath them.

Jesus is God of the universe and he was born to a homeless couple, in a stable, without a bed to sleep in.

Jesus told us that the meek would inherit the earth – and then he went out and lived out the example of meekness in his own life. Jesus called us to be kind and humble. Jesus embodied meekness – but anyone who would mistake Jesus for weak, well, they miss the courage of going to the cross, don’t they?

Paul himself exhibited this blend of courage and meekness. He was the apostle who boldly proclaimed the gospel of Jesus to people who had never heard it, but who allowed himself to be arrested unjustly so that he could share his testimony with the highest levels of government.

Paul’s words in Galatians demand we consider what it means to follow Jesus in our own lives, whether it’s about brandishing a weapon, driving a car, or considering the words we use. In fact, his words on meekness in Galatians 5 seem directly aimed at the church in verses 14-15: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

Consider that for a minute: Paul wrote a letter to a church he founded and included the line, ‘if you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.’ This is true, right? If two people attack each other, it falls into Confucius’ reminder that if you embark on a journey for revenge, to first prepare two graves. When we quarrel and fight – we lose something of ourselves.

So, Jesus proposes that the meek will inherit the earth.

Paul tells us to love our neighbor – and to proceed with humility and kindness toward each other even in the church.

We need to be aware of Jesus’ teaching – but our awareness of Paul’s focus on the church could change our community. We’re called to humbly serve each other because it is what the kingdom of God is about and it allows us to show the best of who we are to the community.

When we embrace meekness, we realize that our worth is in our being loved by God – not in some earthly presentation of power or pride. When we embrace meekness, we recognize that our personal integrity can’t be taken away by anyone – or anything – and we don’t need to embrace bravado to convince anyone else. When we embrace meekness, we recognize that God’s pattern for us is even better than anything we could come up with for ourselves.

This is counterintuitive to everything that the world tells us. Be bold. Take what you want. When someone disagrees with you, shout them down.

Meekness …. doesn’t make any sense in that context.

Unfortunately, when we recognize everything Paul is saying about the church, he’s saying we have to practice meekness — humility — even inside of the church.

Are there things you can recognize today are keeping our church from being the best it can be? Is there a ‘sharp edge’ that you can help soften? Is there a subgroup of people inside our church that could use your kindness?

Who do you need to make amends with? What attitudes need to change for you to be meeker, in and out of church? What difference would it make if you didn’t have to have the last word?

If we could get to the point where we practice meekness inside of church, imagine how much it would impact our lives outside of church – and who might come here.

I learned of a church several years ago that had a problem. It wasn’t that…

…there wasn’t enough money.

….there weren’t good people there.

….the programs weren’t right.

But the church leadership soon realized that the people who did come weren’t happy with things that happened there, and they told all of their friends about how unhappy they were. The church leadership had talked about inviting new people – and people actively invited their friends. The people at the church thought they were doing a great job of inviting everyone they knew – but those people wouldn’t come – because they knew their churchgoing friends weren’t happy there.

The people at that church just weren’t getting along – just like Paul’s church plant in Galatia.

I wonder what a difference it would have made if the people of that church had embraced meekness. I wonder what my life would look like if I truly tackled meekness. I wonder what our church would look like if we practiced humility in a completely all-inclusive way.

I don’t want to oversell meekness here, but seriously, the fate of the Earth is at stake. Go forth to inherit the Earth.

There once was a town high in the Alps that straddled the banks of a beautiful stream. The stream was fed by springs that were old as the earth and deep as the sea.

The water was clear like crystal. Children laughed and played beside it, swans and geese swam on it. You could see the rocks and the sand and the rainbow trout that swarmed at the bottom of the stream.

High in the hills, far beyond anyone’s sight, lived an old man who served as Keeper of the Springs. He had been hired so long ago that now no one could remember a time when he wasn’t there. He would travel from one spring to another in the hills, removing branches or fallen leaves or debris that might pollute the water. But his work was unseen.

One year the town council decided they had better things to do with their money. No one supervised the old man anyway. They had roads to repair and taxes to collect and services to offer, and giving money to an unseen stream-cleaner had become a luxury they could no longer afford.

So the old man left his post. High in the mountains, the springs went untended; twigs and branches and worse muddied the liquid flow.

Mud and silt compacted the creek bed; farm wastes turned parts of the stream into stagnant bogs.

For a time no one in the village noticed. But after a while, the water was not the same. It began to look brackish. The swans flew away to live elsewhere. The water no longer had a crisp scent that drew children to play by it. Some people in the town began to grow ill. All noticed the loss of sparkling beauty that used to flow between the banks of the streams that fed the town. The life of the village depended on the stream, and the life of the streams depended on the keeper.

The city council reconvened, the money was found, the old man was rehired. After yet another time, the springs were cleaned, the stream was pure, children played again on its banks, illness was replaced by health, the swans came home, and the village came back to life. (– John Ortberg in “Soul Keeping”)

Water is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Adults are made sixty percent water.

We bathe or shower in it (hopefully).

We brush our teeth with it.

We feed our plants and water our crops with it.

We play in it at the lake, the river, the pool, and the ocean.

We drink it.

But sometimes, we can become so used to its properties, and its goodness, that we lose sight of how important it is.

Like when the water supply becomes tainted by outside forces.

Like when a drought comes, and suddenly we are aware that we are stuck, dry, parched.

Like when we experience dehydration, and suddenly, our thirst is overwhelming.

In our scripture from John 4, Jesus arrives after a long trip, under pressure from the government who want him to stop preaching and rallying people. He’s thirsty, tired, and hot. Jesus is ground down by the trip, and arrives in the heat of the day in enemy territory – alone and unable to get a drink. Jesus is at a well, but he has no way to access the water.

And then a Samaritan woman showed up. Now, some of you may remember Samaria from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus is Jewish, and believes God should be worshipped one way; Samaritans believed another way. Their religious differences had made them bitter enemies, even though they were all descended from the same ancestors.

Jesus is tired, thirsty… and in the middle of a battlefield for first century B.C. Hatfields and McCoys. But he asks the woman for a drink.

Now to be clear: the woman knows he’s an enemy. The woman knows culturally a man and a woman encountering each other in public are supposed to avert their eyes and keep walking.

But Jesus isn’t worried about any of that. Jesus wants to get to the point. Jesus says: “if you knew who I was, I could give you so much more than water.”

And then there’s her reply: “You have nothing to draw water with!”

The Samaritan woman is pragmatic, realistic. She can see the heat of the day. She can see the friction of their cultures. She knows the danger involved in their interaction.

And yet, Jesus sees the bigger picture. Jesus sees that something else is going on. Jesus is a “me too” person – we’re in this together.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that everyone who drinks water – H2O – will be thirsty again – but that the water he provides will lead them on to eternal life. That the water will never run out.

We know that Jesus wasn’t talking about the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, that Jesus was talking about a relationship, an eternal one, between God and humankind.

But before the woman can understand that, Jesus knows she must move past where she’s stuck, where she thinks she has to be. I encourage you to read through the rest of the chapter to see how Jesus challenges the way that the woman is living. She’s in her sixth relationship – bouncing from lover to lover to find her purpose and why she matters.

And Jesus shows up in the midst of her “stuff” and says: God wants to have an eternal relationship with you. Sometimes we fail to see these moments because we’re stuck in our perspective and understanding – and we try to force God into that perspective, too.

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers was fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his body on the battlefield and decided to give him a Christian burial. They remembered a church a few miles behind the front lines whose grounds included a small cemetery surrounded by a white fence. After receiving permission to take their friend’s body to the cemetery, they set out for the church, arriving just before sunset.

A priest, his bent-over back and frail body betraying his many years, responded to their knocking. His face, deeply wrinkled and tan, was the home of two fierce eyes that flashed with wisdom and passion.

“Our friend was killed in battle,” they blurted out, “and we wanted to give him a church burial.”

Apparently the priest understood what they were asking, although he spoke in very broken English. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can bury only those of the same faith here.”

Weary after many months of wars, the soldiers simply turned to walk away. “But,” the old priest called after them, “you can bury him outside the fence.”

Cynical and exhausted, the soldiers dug a grave and buried their friend just outside the white fence. They finished after nightfall.

The next morning, the entire unit was ordered to move on, and the group raced back to the little church for one final goodbye to their friend. When they arrived, they couldn’t find the gravesite. Tired and confused, they knocked on the door of the church. They asked the priest if he knew where they had buried their friend. “It was dark last night and we were exhausted. We must have been disoriented.”

A smile flashed across the old priest’s face. “After you left last night, I could not sleep, so I went out early this morning and I moved the fence.”–Mike Yaconelli, “Messy Spirituality”

Jesus shows up and moves the fence.

He tells this Samaritan woman – who his disciples don’t even understand why he would bother talking to her because she’s unimportant, because she’s a woman, because she doesn’t believe the right things – that God wants to forgive her sins and fulfill her life in the here and now. He tells her she can be in.

All because Jesus was thirsty – and tired – and showed up in the middle of the day when no one expected it.

This woman arrived expecting one thing – that she would draw some water from the well and go back to the daily grind. Jesus showed up and offered her so much more.

And I believe that’s what God offers us today.

I’m aware as I meet with people in our community and as I watch the news that there’s an expectation about how the world works. There are things happening here and around the world that we don’t like, but it can sometimes feel like it’s all too overwhelming, like what could we possibly do about it?

And then Jesus shows up thirsty – and meets a stranger – and everything changes. And I wonder, what would happen if we went out of our church into the community this week, and met strangers, and offered them something better? What if we offered people more than what the media has to say about us – as a church, as business people, as public safety representatives, as people in whatever label others might stick us in – like Jew or Samaritan – and said instead:

“God loves you – and knows you. God wants to have a relationship with you and take care of your heart.”

Would that make any difference?

In John 4:39-41, it says that “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.”

All because Jesus showed up thirsty for water.

All because the Samaritan woman showed up thirsty for more in life.

Think about a time you were hungry – or thirsty. How did you satisfy it? Did it last?

I know the worst time to go grocery shopping is when I’m hungry. I return home having satisfied the grocery list, but I’ve also bought things that I don’t need and that aren’t good for me. My hunger wants to be satisfied by short cuts, with carbs and sugar, rather than the long term satisfaction of protein and vitamins.

When I get too thirsty, I have to admit that sometimes I stand in front of the fridge, door hanging open in the summer. I’m so thirsty that I don’t know what I want to drink. I should drink water. It’s what’s best for you – remember, 60% of your body? – but it would be easier to grab a Coke, or a Hi-C. That’s the problem with our thirst – we sometimes try to fill it with all of the wrong things.

And yet, whenever I drink that other stuff… I always end up thirsty again.

So let’s recap: There’s a woman who has been trying to heal a hurt, fill a hole, satisfy a need, and she’s tried it with relationships that can’t satisfy her. Jesus shows up, trying to take a break, and rest. The woman’s need exceeds Jesus’ pursuit of solitude. Jesus offers this outcast woman the good news of salvation through gentle confrontation, and images she can understand, inviting her into an “insider” relationship with God. The woman embraces this good news, and recognizing she has crossed a line into true freedom, her first move is to go and share it with everyone who will listen. Her newfound freedom makes her want to share that freedom with others.

It’s actually the freedom from those things that we’re told will satisfy us … like the Samaritan woman’s pursuit of ‘just the right relationship.’

Or like the way that we pursue money to power to careers to drugs to “stuff”…The way we make ourselves busy – even if it’s just with Pokemon Go – to ignore the things we should be invested in…

Jesus shows up and says, “Let’s get real. Let’s be truly here. Let’s be in relationship.”

The truth is that God already knows our hopes and our dreams, our fears and our worries, our sins and our failures.

Jesus shows up and says, “you are known to God, and loved.”

Jesus shows up and says, “you don’t need to have it all together.”

Jesus shows up and says, “it’s not too late to repent of our homophobic, racist, classicist, denominational, misogynistic ostracization of whoever we deem to be ‘other.'”

Jesus shows up and says, “I will be with you.”

Jesus shows up and says, “You are forgiven.”

In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis uses the analogy of a boy who becomes a dragon to explain how God cuts through all of the other stuff to find us. The boy’s name is Eustace, and the important thing to note here is that Eustace cannot change himself back. He tries to reveal his true self, but he’s stuck. He tears at the scales of his dragon covering, but he can’t undo his transformation. He knows who he was, but he can’t be restored.

Of course, Aslan arrives and Aslan, as Jesus, offers this boy/dragon a chance to change, but in the process, he will have to tear off the scales. Eustace says, “The first tear he made was so deep, that I thought it had gone right into my heart. When he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt.”

Aslan could help Eustace; Jesus could help the woman. Aslan reminded Eustace that he was a boy, not a dragon. Jesus reminded the woman that she was loved by God, that she was not the “woman who had six husbands” or “rejected” or however her community had come to identify her. She was a child of God.

Friends, today I pray that you would let the living water wash over you. That you would remember your baptism where you were claimed by God, cleaned up and made whole. God loves you – and wants to have a relationship with you – because you matter. It doesn’t matter where you thought the fence was before.

God has a way of moving the fence. Amen.

Eight years is a long time.

When we arrived at Blandford, one of our sons was barely one year old and the other … didn’t even exist yet.  I had no silver in the temples. But when I stood up here on July 6, 2008, I preached on the story of Moses. He was the Biblical figure that I could relate to – not the parting of the Red Sea Moses but the on-the-run, which-way-is-up Moses. As I prepared for this, my final Sunday preaching at Blandford, I realized that it was only appropriate that I look back to the story of Moses again – and see the parallels.

When I arrived at Blandford, I was fresh off a year of working my dream job, as the associate chaplain of the University of Richmond. While the position had only been an interim – one I served for less than a full year – I honestly believed that I would work there for the rest of my life. My hopes and dreams had been tied to that job, and I expected that I’d stay there forever. But on April 1, 2008, I found out that the interim position wouldn’t be available in July, and I was thrust – late – into the appointment process.

Moses never believed his life could take all of the crazy turns it did. Moses, an Israelite who had grown up in the Pharaoh’s household, found himself suddenly ejected forcibly from his safety bubble. Fresh off a violent interaction with an Egyptian overseer, Moses goes on the run, lives in the wilderness with people who are not his own – and suddenly finds himself called by God to a position he never expected (Exodus 2).

Now, let’s be clear: I never wanted to be a pastor. Work with youth? Sure – but I’d done that already. Minister to young adults and their families? Absolutely. Provide care for the people of a church or campus? Okay. But be the “buck stops here” pastor of a church? I’m sorry, I think you’re looking at the wrong guy.

Moses has that conversation pretty directly with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3).

God: Hey, Moses! Over here!

Moses: Um, yes, strange voice from a burning shrub. What is it?

God: I’m God. The same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Moses (to himself): Yikes, this is a little intense.

God: I’m sending you to Pharaoh and my people.

Moses (half to himself, half to God): Who, me? What am I going to do?

God: I’ll be with you.

Now, at this point, I have to admit I really felt for Moses. As someone who had preached – spoken really – maybe three dozen times tops, I wondered how in the world I would come up with something to say every week. I mean, there’s inspiration, there’s preparation, and there’s perspiration. That first year, I wondered what in the world I was supposed to say – and how to say it.

In all seriousness, I have always been more comfortable writing it than saying it. But what was I, at thirty, supposed to say to people in their fifties, sixties, seventies, and even eighties? What could I say about God that these people had never heard before? What could I say that spoke to their life situations?

And God says back to Moses – and to me – “I’ll be with you. I will give you what to say. I will show up in ways that people understand that you’re with me and I’ve got this.”

Eight years is a long time.

But in those eight years, I’ve preached some duds, I’ve told some bad jokes, and I’ve done my best to remind myself and all of you that we are not alone, that God is with us, and that God’s plan for us is better than what we could’ve made up for ourselves.

Moses, over twelve plagues and several misadventures, sees God perform miracles, and then leads the people on a march out of Egypt that crosses the Red Sea, topples an army, and marches around toward the Promised Land. Sure, there were missteps – no one’s perfect – but in he process, Moses’ people are delivered to the Promised Land.

I’ve seen that process. I’ve seen the way that Blandford has grown – and I have grown – through  hundreds of people served food, given coats, offered assistance. I’ve seen people baptized, married, and buried in faith as they continued in their journey. We started out pursuing CF3: Christ following, compassion filled, and community focused. We tried to make the main thing the main thing even as I – and we – worked out what it meant to be church.

And I realize how much I would have missed out on if we had never come here.

True story: in December of my first year, seven and a half years ago, I found myself in the district superintendent’s office. The conversation went something like this.

DS: So where are you going?

Me: Going? I’m appointed to Blandford.

DS: Yes, but it’s small. You should go somewhere else.

Me: I just started! There’s so much to do.

DS: Well, I almost moved you somewhere else in September.

Me (internally): You’re kidding me, right?

[He was not kidding.]

It’s amazing how life works out. How God sees a story in each of us that we couldn’t see for ourselves. How God would use a guy who wasn’t even looking to be a pastor…

I doubt the people who planted Blandford as an outpost of Washington Street could’ve seen what it would grow to be. Or that the people of Blandford who moved out of the city in 1989 could’ve imagined the highs and lows of the next twenty years. I know that no one had the wildest inkling of what would happen when Blandford and the Stand church plant were brought together.

But here we are, stronger, better, more kingdom-oriented, because of that.

Now, I realize and many of you may remember that Moses didn’t make it into the promised land. He got to see it, but he didn’t get to walk in with the people he’d lead there. Someone else did that – Joshua. The torch was passed, the process continued, in much the same way it will be here as the United Methodist appointment project brings the next pastor to Blandford. It’s part of the process that we trust to keep us focused on the kingdom of God.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I will miss this – and each of you. I am sad, and I know that some (many?) of you are sad. We have become a family here, and been through much, both highs and lows.

But… I am aware that God sees the big picture. That Moses was good at one thing and Joshua was good at another. That the kingdom moved forward at the right time and the right place.

That God continues to hear the cry of his people and raises us up to follow God and be lights to those around us.

That God sent his one and only son to a world desperately in need of a leader, a friend, a comforter, a challenger, a savior – and that churches like ours are to be the outposts of the good news in the world today.

It’s all part of the plan.

I hope that you will embrace Reverend Colwell with the hearts you wrapped around us when we arrived. I hope you will dream and pray about what the kingdom of God looks like right here and give her the support, prayers, and hard work that you gave us.

But, there’s one more thing I noticed about Moses’ story as I prepared for this last word of challenge and comfort. And I realized it was for me.

My admiration for Moses has often been aimed at the way he heard God’s call and was faithful in the midst of his own fear. How Moses knew he was inadequate and yet continued to push forward. How Moses did things in spite of his fear.

But the truth is that Moses wasn’t alone. And I don’t mean to overspiritualize it with God’s presence. No, Moses had a team – Moses was part of a community, even if he couldn’t always see that community.

Moses had Miriam, who saved him from death as an infant, pulled him from the river in a basket, found his ‘nurse’, and supported him, rooting him on as he led the people of God (Exodus 2).

Moses had Aaron, who served as the priest – who spoke the words for Moses when Moses didn’t know the words to say (Exodus 4:14).

Moses had Joshua, his mentee, and his warrior, to do the things that Moses could not do (Numbers 27:18).

Moses had Hur, who helped hold up Moses’ arms when Moses grew tired in the most important battle he fought (Ex. 17:12).

Moses had his father-in-law Jethro who reminded him that he could not do it all himself, that he needed to delegate and grow others in leadership (Ex. 18:11-23).

Moses didn’t do it on his own. And I haven’t been alone. While my family and friends have been powerful encouragement and support to me in the eight years I have been here, I realized that in the time I spent here, I have surrounded by the people, by the team, that Moses was surrounded with.

You have been my Miriams, my Aarons, my Joshuas, my Hurs, my Jethros. You have challenged me, filled in the gaps, been those things that I failed to be. And for this, I will be forever grateful.

Thank you.

Thank you for serving as nursery workers and Sunday School teachers even when our children were the only ones in the room.

Thank you for boldly taking on crazy new ideas you had never heard before, whether it was some wild fundraiser – or gathering coats for kids you’d never met.

Thank you for defending the church (and its pastor) in parking lot conversations and via text. You know who you are.

Thank you for being willing to accept a “green” pastor.

Thank you for believing in me.

Thank you for loving me, for loving us, for pursuing the vision I had and for the vision God put on your church leadership while I was here.

Blandford stretched me, challenged me, and, yes, gave me many of these silver hairs on my temple.

But this place, and you its people, reminded me of my call – and what God sees in my life.

Moving forward, I hope that you remember. What we were – and who we are. With these things, I hope you can see the great potential God sees in you individually and corporally.

You are and will be someone’s Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Joshua, Hur, or Jethro. Without you, the church isn’t whole, the kingdom of God isn’t complete.

God is still calling, in burning bushes, responding to the cries of all humanity. God is still seeking us, to answer the call, to be faithful, to go.

I pray that you will remember that Jesus died on the cross for you – to save you from your sins and yourself – to help you realize the life that God meant for you in the first place, full of joy, and peace, and hope … and love.

I pray with all my heart that God would continue to find people in Blandford who still hear that still small voice – and rise to the challenge – whether it’s loving those others ignore, serving those in need, or embracing children who need a home.

I pray that you will be bold – to pursue the dreams and hopes that God puts on your hearts, and on the heart of this church.

I pray that you will continue to believe that despite the church’s size, location, finances, or whatever other excuses are laid before it, that this church can make a difference in the community.

I pray that you will see the world as full of possibility not impossibility, with the focus on what Christ has done, and will do, through us.

I pray that you will forgive any hurts I have caused – and pray for us as we journey to the next place God has called us to.

I pray that at the end of the month, that you will recognize that I will no longer be your pastor, but I will always be your friend. We will see each other again – on this side or the next!

As we pray all of these things together, may God grant us grace as our journey unfolds, in new directions, with great promise, and hope for the future in the kingdom of God.

The kingdom is here – and not yet – but we get to be part of it when we answer the call. Amen.