How Long?
Have you ever looked up and realized – “Oh my goodness, I’ve been doing this for how long?” Maybe it was a chore – gardening, folding laundry, scrubbing the dishes – maybe it was doom-scrolling on your phone or binging a show on Netflix – or maybe it was your job. I mentioned to someone this week that I’d been here 11 years and they were a bit amazed. Me too. But when I look back on the pictures of my children – 8, 5 & 3 when we came… and now a college sophomore and two high-schoolers… it’s been awhile! And more than half our staff has been here longer than me!
Extend that out to many of you, who have been members of this church and members of this community for many, many years… time has a way of building up before we realize it. Faithfulness over the course of that time is something to be celebrated! So, thank you!
It’s also something that crops up without us realizing, in the story of God’s people, and in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, which we’re examining in the letter to the Galatians in worship right now. At some point, Paul had ventured into the region (and Roman Province) of Galatia – a people who had migrated nearly 300 years ago from Gaul… a people who were ethnically and historically celtic – sound familiar? Paul presented the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ, people responded, and communities of Christ-followers (the term “Christians” may have been coined in Galatia) – formed. Paul carried on a ministry of support from afar, just as they had supported him when he showed up among them.
And that took time. Lots of time. Not just Paul’s ministry to the Galatians, but Paul’s ministry in general. He recounts the broad strokes at the end of the first and beginning of that second chapter. After his Road to Damascus event – Jesus appearing to him in a blinding light – he spends three years in Arabia, then meets with Peter, James and the other Apostles in Jerusalem. Then he goes to Syria and Cilicia, then fourteen more years pass before he goes back to Jerusalem. All of this happens before he’s writing back to the Galatians. So Paul’s been at this – preaching, teaching, traveling, across the Roman world for nearly 20 years (or more). Think about all that happens in that time – all that can’t fit into a letter.
Think about your own life. Think about all the little (and big) ways that you were working, that God was working, that God was working in you over the decades. It’s a lot. And then you think about all the people who’ve had an impact – all the Tituses and Barnabuses, who’ve supported and encouraged you (Barnabas literally means “son of encouragement”) – just like Paul. And it’s pretty mind-blowing.
This letter we’re looking at and reading together, is just a snap shot, a little slice of a much greater ministry and the many, many, many lives impacted by the good news of God’s love in Jesus. And God can use it to impact us today, too.
I look forward to celebrating those kinds of impacts with you in worship this Sunday and beyond!
Welcoming You to Grow in Jesus,
Pastor Don