Friday, May 4, 2012

Do We Dare Look Back

We are awaiting a beginning. Is that so abnormal? We see something that is about to happen, see God in it, and want to press the fast forward button. While I am the last person in the world who would ever purport to be able to teach patience, I am a believer that everything happens for a reason. While there are many things which are occurring that I don't understand, a few things this week, came to my attention.

This is a strangely nostalgic time of year for me. A couple of things, including the end of Jacob's school year, the preparation for the beginning of Emily's formal education, and the ending of a fictional world with which I have become acquainted, have made me start down nostalgia boulevard.

While many of these instigators of my journey have left me thinking about things with finite periods of existence, I was really shocked into forced contemplation by the death of a friend of my brother-in-law. While I have previously stated some thoughts on death and there are doubtlessly many more thoughts to have, the thing that makes looking back at death even more difficult is that life is not really a finite existence. Our life on this world, of course, is. While this made me strangely desirous of looking back at how God blessed us through the life of one of His Saints, I felt we could look at this in many areas.

I do understand that any beginning is the result of the end of some other, previous beginning. So, as Orlando Grace has learned that our desire to move into a permanent facility has caught an unfortunate delay, I felt now would be the time to look back on some of the great things that have been accomplished in the previous phases of our existence. Since I am a relatively new member to Orlando Grace, the depth of my knowledge certainly can be surpassed by many. Nevertheless, I do have good memories of the facility where we are.

First, when we visited the church seven and a half years ago for one Sunday (and we thought it was too far, as we were living in a temporary shelter ourselves), the service really changed our lives, which we are still applying. Selfishly speaking, because of the fact that we have been in a temporary home, I was able to meet and build relationships with what would become members of my church family through some combined events before we even became members. The facility we are currently in marks the location where we joined, the facility where we saw our first "Not a Talent Show," and the site we saw "our elder" Will have hands laid on him and join the leadership team formally.

I know there were many life-changing decisions reached in the facility. I know there were countless friendships initiated at the facility. I'm sure that the story of moving into the SDA, which was so close to the property and the office was a real story of God's work. And while I know we are all very excited that something new is coming, I also know that we would be remiss if we didn't thank God for the great work He accomplished at where we are.

As we meander through each other's lives, it is great to know that God uses things of which we are anxious to do away to accomplish His purposes. I know God has great things planned for the new facility, but I'm also quite confident that He will accomplish a few great things in the last two or three or ten remaining weeks we have in our temporary home!

2 comments:

  1. Well said. It is a bitter sweet moment to leave the temporary place where so many of us began our journey with Orlando Grace Church. We are very thankful for God's working through the gracious people of the SDA in blessing us with a long term temporary place of worship.
    Looking forward and reflectively backward.
    Susan Woods

    ReplyDelete
  2. A beginning is also an end. I like that.

    ReplyDelete