This past week Wesley was able to host Hunt Regional Hospital’s drive through vaccine distribution event. Thank you to Hunt Regional for asking and letting us be a part of the healing of our community. A huge “Thank You” to Jeff Cullen has worked as our mission representative, along with our Board Chair Beverly White, the Board and Staff for doing our part. It is another way Wesley has participated in being a blessing to our community.
I want to ask for a moment of reflection from you all. Particularly those of you who helped build this building in the 1980’s and those who built the addition with the covered port a cache on the Joe Ramsey side of the building in 2009. At any time in the design or planning process would you have thought: Let’s design a wide, covered drive through area so we may host vaccine distribution? Or would you have ever thought, we should build this so we may conduct drive through communion someday? Unless you know something I do not about this, I can imagine the answer is “no”. As a matter of fact, I believe most of you would have said, “never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would have done either of those activities when we designed the building.”
What you did do was understand God was calling you to act in that season and you all chose to respond faithfully. Without knowing what tomorrow held, you chose to act in faith to respond to what God was leading you to do. You invested in your present, trusting, come what may, Wesley would continue to raise up faithful leaders to respond faithfully in the future to also respond to God’s leadership. Like the apostle Paul said in 2 Cor 5:7 “for we walk by faith, not by sight” NRSV.
I believe in seasons of uncertainty (like the one we have been in close to 11 months now) it is critical to keep our focus on being faithful. We do not always know exactly what to do. We always know how to do it though. Not with a step by step guide mind you, rather we are called to act by faith, in faith, in response to God. It is times like this a paradigm leads us when a step by step guide cannot. Jesus’ words like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “Love the Lord God… love you neighbor as yourself” can guide us when we do not otherwise have a defined response: what is the most loving way to interact with our community, neighbors, and self.
While we still do not have a defined end point to all of this, it is looking like we are significantly closer to the conclusion of all this mess than we are to the start of it all. Continue to pray for those in need, for our medical providers and community, for our nation, and for our neighbors.
In Christ,
Pastor Chris
