Today I’m thankful.

But it is also overshadowed by so many “what-ifs” and “whys”.

So many things happened last week for me. I was exposed to COVID, which lead to self-isolating. To make it worse, we were evacuated for over a week from our house because of the NorCal fires.

If you want an example of something that literally takes it out of you, this was it.

Fast forward to almost two weeks later. We’ve made it out of quarantine, and our evacuation is lifted. 200 yards down the road from our neighborhood is the scene of pure tragedy, where years of memories and family have gone up with the ashes. Many tears have been shed, lives changed, and hopes lost at the sight of charred earth and visceral destruction. In my heart, I’m thankful we were spared, but I’m also hurting because there are many of my neighbors who lost everything.

We do this thing sometimes in the church world where when God does something miraculous in our lives, we celebrate it and blast it loud for everyone to see. But, we also do this thing where when something goes wrong, we question the integrity and we attach an implied judgment and sin in line with what’s happened. There are people who love Jesus as much as I do, that have kids trying to go to the first days of their zoom classroom, who are homeless right now because their home is a pile of ashes.

In the shadows, there are people who’ve walked through our situations before and have been disappointed by the fact that the outcome they expected did not happen. The outcome they got was hard, they had to rebuild their home, they had to go through the whole treatment, etc. I think we need to celebrate what God can do and is going to do in the situations after.

How He can use a pile of rubble, to help a community know that there is still hope, how he can strengthen people through a hard process and let people know he is with them even though their loss and pain.

How can He use ME?

Today I’m thankful for the pain He allowed me to experience because my pain someday might be someone else’s hope.

Maintaining,
Mark

———–

The next several stories posts will be from different staff members as they explain what “Maintaining the Mission” has meant to them over the course of 2020’s forever changes. This week, read the take from MARK KLINGER, VP of Operations & Networking