A number of people and situations recently affirmed for Monica and I how we are in the process of being sent to Trinity CRC in Rock Valley IA. When we received and accepted the call to serve at Trinity, we sensed God inviting us to pursue this adventure. In a number of conversations and especially prayers over the past couple of months, we’ve heard people emphasize how we’re not just leaving Telkwa and our church here, but we’re being sent – being sent with God’s blessing and the blessing of His people.
We use this language of sending more often, particularly for pastors, missionaries, and similar professions it seems. I wish we’d speak this way for anyone moving from one place to another. For example, Monica and I have a number of friends who have moved over the years from Telkwa to Houston (BC, not TX!). We were sad to see them leave our community, but it’s clear that they’ve become blessings in their new setting. They have made new friends and are adding to the life of local churches there. At the time, I just sadly saw them as leaving, but now it’s pretty clear that God was sending them to be a blessing in a new context.
If we follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, any move from one place to another can become a divine sending.
Then again, we don’t have to uproot to experience God’s sending to the community, school, jobsite, or retirement home in which we already find ourselves. As Wayne Watson sings in “Field of Souls,”
One is off to foreign soil
— to work a distant land;
another anchors close to home
— to hold a neighbour’s hand.
Who has served the Father most?
— And who has laboured best?
That life devoted to our God,
— that devotion will be blessed.
Graphic from Photo Dictionary.
Here’s a drama performed to the song “Field of Souls.”
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4th Point 