A New People

This past Sunday's church attendance included a retirement dinner for the pastor who was preparing to hang up his preaching robe for a pair of overalls at a farm.  It sounded a bit familiar, but more than the familiarity with such a transition were the memories of what it personally felt like on that final Sunday some fifteen years ago.  One of the things I remembered most was the awareness that I would no longer have a people.  To put it it archaic and traditional terms, I would be a shepherd without a flock.  No longer would I have a community of God's people entrusted to my spiritual care.    

As the memory of that moment washed over me again, I remembered, too, with gratitude how wrong I could be.  First, God enabled me to serve a small church up the road and across the river from where I lived and there among those folks I experienced community in a way that has extended beyond the years of my pastorate there.  Shortly after those four years ended, the blog I was writing began to evolve into a daily ministry I could never have thought possible.  As I sat there in the midst of last Sunday's celebration, I remembered the new people, the new community,  God had given me through the writing ministry.    

When I was preaching my sphere of influence for Him was mostly limited to the city limits of the community to which I was appointed, but through JourneyNotes it now stretches into eight states and somewhere around twenty five communities in Georgia.  What I have been given through the writing ministry is a new congregation, a new people, scattered across such a wide region.  I write with much gratitude for the gift of continued usefulness.  I remember, too, that part of the prayer of Jabez in which he prays, "...bless me and enlarge my border..." (I Chronicles 4:10).  Will any of us come to a place in this life of not being useful to God?  I think not.  No, think is the wrong word. I know none of us will live beyond our usefulness to Him and His Kingdom's work.