“The world is exhausting me under a constant barrage of news, conflict, and injustice. I look to my church to feel the love of God fulfilling and refueling me to take on the week.”
This was what one of our BIG Idea Team members shared earlier this summer. Can you identify with their statement? I know I can, both in how the world around us is impacting my life and in what I hope for from my community of faith.
Looking around, it’s not hard to see the cracks in the world and the downright brokenness of the structures we have relied upon in the past. It’s no surprise then, that we might carry this reality with us as we wander into the church, reconnecting to this community of faith, seeking some countervailing truth. This is the premise of what our BIG Idea Team is placing before us in the weeks and months ahead.
Alongside the reality that we and the world in which we find ourselves is so very broken, there is a truth to which this church is especially charged with proclaiming. In God’s world, we are broken AND we are beautiful. Since the beginning of the human story, our ability to mess things up has never been in doubt but neither has God’s love for us, nor God’s ability to make something remarkable of all the chipped, cracked, and mangled chunks of the life that we possess.
We are broken AND we are beautiful. This is whom God has promised to love. Come, be reminded of this truth, be remade by this promise, and be refilled by this meal we will share. Bring your brokenness and find the beauty that God sees.
May God’s peace find you today. -Pastor Peter
Let us pray… God of promise, we are exhausted by the world and all its flaws, many of our own doing. We are broken, make us beautiful again. Welcome us in, restore us with your Word and renew us with bread, wine, and the company of all your people. Amen.