About a week-or-so ago, a woman sent us an email requesting prayer for an emergency health situation. Her email was rife with desperation. She was in a moment that was far bigger than she was prepared to handle. She needed something. She needed someone.

The email got forwarded to our prayer team and on to our associate elders. People began praying. Then, people starting trying to figure out ways they could support the family during their time of need. A conversation began about which people, on which days could bring the family a meal. Others began working out solutions to mow lawns that would otherwise go unattended. Some started figuring out when they would make the hospital visit to pray bedside with the family.

This is the church acting like the church.

This is the kind of community to which you belong.

In deep pain and panic, we feel the most vulnerable and the most alone. It’s in those situations where we experience the most profound thirst, not for the explanations as to why things have happened in the way they have. Rather, we come face-to-face with the thirst for relationships — a personal awareness that we’re not alone in whatever it is we face.

While we can’t address every need, in every moment, we can always aim to live more and more in this reality of the church body: a loving community of people seeking ways to address the needs of the needy in our neighborhoods in the name of Jesus.

Honored to be the pastor of such a church,

Jeff