Below is the text from my Moment in Faith given this morning at the 8:00 and 10:15 services:
A few weeks ago, I was standing outside of the school with another teacher. Both of us were waiting for the rain to let up before we slogged our way through the swamp to our cars. We were just standing there watching the rain and the heavy, dark clouds and finally Susan asked me where I was going.
“To church,” I said.
“On a Tuesday?” she said.
I grinned. “I’d go every day if they’d let me.”
For the longest time, she just stood there and stared at me.
“It’s changed my life,” I told her.
And she nodded. “I know it has,” she said.
It’s one thing to simply tell people how God has changed your life. It’s something else though—something wonderful and beautiful—when people can see that change for themselves—when they can see something new about you in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you walk, how you speak.
And I know what people see in me. It’s an emotion that has filled me and carried and lifted me these past six months.
It’s joy.
C.S. Lewis says that anyone who experiences joy will want it again—which is probably why I keep begging Pastor Debbie to give me more things to do around here.
For me the culmination of that joy was here one month ago when I was confirmed by Bishop Hugo. As you may remember, as soon as I knelt before Bishop Hugo, I started crying and the tears continued when Lorraine and Judy and Robin stood there with me, when they lay their hands on my shoulders and back.
It was like I was being made new. It was the single greatest blessing, greatest healing, greatest joy, I had ever experienced. And I cried because I felt—I saw a glimpse of the depth of God’s love. And it was almost more than I could bear.
Confirmation day was the end of one journey and the beginning of another for me.
Lately, Pastor Debbie’s been throwing around a certain phrase a lot. Maybe you’ve heard her say it.
Hope is a journey.
It’s certainly been a journey for me.
In her sermon last week, Pastor Debbie spoke of the faith story she wrote in seminary. In her faith story she wrote about the One who would come and save her. She writes that, “He said if I followed him he’d take the weight I’d been carrying and show me the way to have life like I’d never imagined.”
Just after my confirmation one of my friends commented that though she didn’t know much of my past, she knew that whatever it was that I was carrying was very, very heavy. She said that since I had found Hope, she had seen that burden vanish. I seemed happier, lighter.
I grew up watching my mother suffer from a horrible, debilitating disease. When I was eleven I attended my best friend’s funeral. Yes, my burden was heavy. But in those years, I never gave up hope; I never doubted God’s love. And the beauty of God’s love is that you don’t have to do anything to earn it.
When I came to Hope, God took that burden from me without me even asking him to do it. It was as if he said, “You’ve carried it long enough.”
And that is why I’m so filled with joy, because of God’s love.
This is the journey of Hope. This is the journey of faith.
It is my story.
But it’s your story too.
