Well, we "completed" day one of our mission week at a local neighborhood. For those just tuning into my life, our church has engaged a local mobile home community in ministry and organized a week of power washing and painting porches and homes with their office. Today we had about 25 folks from the age of about 11 to 65 launch from New Bridge armed with lots of equipment and a desire to serve. We arrive onsite at about 8:30am. We began work between 9am and 9:30. At about 10am the drizzle started. At 10:30am, we stopped work as the rain had increased to a point at which we figured it was going not going to stop. As I sit here this afternoon with a forecast that is not boding well for the rest of the week, I reflect on that passage in Matthew 5:45 where it states that rain falls on the just and the unjust. Not sure why that one comes immediately to mind, but for some reason I feel like God has a word for me in that this week.
The other thought that comes immediately to mind is that ministry isn't always going to be easy. The forecast called for rain this morning. In fact, all this last week the weather forecast was rain and not one drop fell! This morning, I made the call to go ahead with the project and just see what would happen. Today, the forecast was actually accurate. That's the risk of leadership, though, I suppose. It isn't always going to work out the way that we had planned. But there's always tomorrow, right? Over the last three days, I have met a lot of people in this community who just some really nice folks with some really tragic circumstances. I think that if I were having a hard time in my own life, I would like to know that the church down the road would show for me in the rain if that's what it takes to help me out. That's the kind of church I would want to be a part of. So tomorrow, we'll get up and gather at New Bridge. We'll get in vans with all of our gear and see what the weather is doing. Maybe it won't rain. If it does, we will have to fold our operation up again and go home. The next day, we'll gather at New Bridge again and start over. The point is that we won't stop. We won't stop reaching out and getting wet and dirty if it means that we are able to reach into the lives of our neighbors and fight for just one opportunity, rain or shine, to tell them that we're there because Jesus loves them and so do we.
