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God: The
Great Disturber
There is surely
a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.
– Proverbs 23.18
Last Sunday after church we talked about plans for remodeling the
church’s fellowship hall. There was a good turnout and everyone seemed
pleased with the presentation. Representatives from the Trustees, the
fundraising committee, and even the contractor answered our questions.
 There
was one questioner – who admitted to playing the “devil’s advocate” in
asking – who wanted to know why anyone should give to the project when
the church might not be around in ten years. (“We’re an older
congregation…in an older neighborhood, etc.”)
I regret to say that I don’t remember what the answer was, although I do
recall the inquirer seemed content with it. Still, it got me to thinking
how I might have responded.
I think the first thing I would have pointed out is that there were
about a dozen youngsters who walked, skipped, galloped forward in church
that same morning for the children’s sermon. They came from somewhere
and someone brought them. There are lots of churches around here who
would love to have even half that many kids in worship. So, we’re not –
as a congregation – as old as we think.
Even more, we’ve got good plans in the works to encourage those same
kids and their friends and their parents to keep coming. Our Christian
Education committee is organizing a “Good Friday Camp” for kids. Later
this summer, they’re putting on a week-long “Music Camp” for children.
These are both good reasons to think faithfully and optimistically.
We’ll have to keep working, of course, but it’s not anything we don’t
have the talent to do – if we also have the love of Christ in our hearts
to inspire us.
Which brings me to the second response I might have given: We don’t know
what the next ten years is going to hold for any of us. Really. None of
us do. It’s just not a question that has an answer. We can observe
tendencies, of course, and we can read financial reports. They tell us
what we’ve done in the past and what might happen in the future – if
nothing intervenes to disturb the trend. But that’s where God comes in.
God is the great disturber of our manufactured trends. He can create
great victories out of apparent disasters.
When Jesus’ disciples’ asked him when he was going to restore the
kingdom of God (Acts 1.6), he told them to wait and see: wait in
Jerusalem and see what God will do. So they did and on the day of
Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon them. On that day the church
was born.
The early disciples had no reason to suspect anything like the church
would come out of the events of Christ’s passion. Even if they were
energized by the resurrection of Jesus, they had no data, no trends to
point to, that would lead them to think God was going to create
something like the fellowship of the church. But he did and here we are,
two millennia later.
I do not believe the days of God’s holy disturbances are over. Like
Proverbs 23.18 says, there’s a hope for God’s faithful, a hope that will
not be cut off. I remain quite hopeful.
-- KDS
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