Walk Together Children

Today we begin the next 20 years.
A new day, a new focus, a new spirit …giving back to God with everything we’ve got, trusting that as we honor God, God will honor us.
It is a fact that too many of us are afraid to step out of our boxes and onto the waters of life. We get used to doing things one way and we are just afraid to venture out.
Over the years, we have talked about “being more out in the community,” but we have not done it. Today, we get up and begin the process of really getting out.
We have been blessed deeply. In spite of so few resources we have done much, but God isn’t even close to being through with us, nor is the first part of the history of Advent United Church of Christ completed.
If we open ourselves to God, we can see what God sees, hear what God hears, and feel what God feels. If we open ourselves to God, we are indeed “new creatures,” losing our fear and increasing our faith.
I said in our Wednesday afternoon “Crazy Faith” Bible study that fear is like the oil we have seen in images from the Gulf oil spill. As oil does not mix with water, even salt water, neither does fear mix with faith. We cannot afford as individuals nor as a church to be leaden down with oil, as are the poor birds and wildlife we have seen on television.
We have been blessed and saved in order to bless and lead others to salvation. We have been freed, some of us, from bondages that kept us cooped up for a long, long time. Did we gain our freedom to stay in the cages? I think not.
And so today begins the first chapter of the last part of the first volume of the story of Advent United Church of Christ. There will be several chapters and all will be stories of how we waited on the Lord but worked as we waited, how we shed fear in favor of faith, how we soared over challenges and problems and became the place that God ordained us to be from the beginning.
For the record, I love you all. I love you because you do give, you do push (even if I have to prod you a bit), and you are growing in the Lord. This place is not the same that it was a year ago, and a year from now, the growth will be even more evident.
We have much, so much, to do in order to make the Kingdom of God alive in our community and in our city, Advent UCC style! We have many clarions to blow to let people know that God is love and because we love God, we are love, too.
Martin Luther King Jr. used to tell workers and volunteers who were working to get black folks the right to vote in the hostile South, “Walk together, children. Dontcha get weary.”
Seems like the message we need to hear and internalize right about now. Our real work is only just beginning. Walk together, Advent. Dontcha get weary.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith