Guest Blogger: Chris Vardy
Life has changed drastically since March. I have been praying, talking on the phone with friends, and spending time with my family to help rationalize and understand what is going on. Trust in God and know that He is with you, even during what seems to be the darkest of times.
We’re not perfect, and we’re tired. But we’re not going to stop trying. We will keep showing up, for your teenagers and for your family. We’ll keep coming up with things for you to show up to. We’ll keep holding up the light of these promises – God is good, and here, and loves us, and it will be ok.
My Name is Chris Vardy, I am a Sophomore at Texas Tech University (Wreck Em’) majoring in Agriculture Communications. Now I know what you’re thinking, I do not know how to talk to cows. That’s next semester. I am very excited to introduce myself to y’all as the new intern for the Youth Ministries.
Sometimes the work we did so happily before — creating content, leading groups, writing lessons, and then offering it in person to watch people engage with it — now feels like effort tossed out onto the ocean of the internet with little way to know if any of it made any difference. And then came this.
Change can be deeply anxiety-inducing: there is something within us that is afraid that we won’t be OK on the other side of whatever change is coming — that we won’t be us, or that the person we are cannot adjust to some new reality. The psalmist, Hebrews, and Leviticus, all repeat this refrain: ” . . . the Lord does not change, the Lord is forever.”
In my experience of growing up and working in churches like this one, I have found that we are sometimes shy about naming the work of the Holy Spirit, feeling a little less comfortable with the God who comes in tongues of fire than God the Creator, or in Jesus. In Family Sunday School this week, we encourage our adults to listen to the stories, understandings, and testaments of children and teenagers for when they’ve seen and felt God’s presence.
This school year was a whirlwind of very inconvenient incidences that made me stray from the productivity I find so much comfort in and made my naturally busy-bodied soul feel frustrated, angry, and disappointed. So to all of my fellow busy-bodies out there: Be still. It might be the most productive thing you do all day.
As we celebrate this weekend all those who have been mothers to us, by birth or by choice, as well as all those who care for and nurture others in our world, I hope we can recognize the sacredness — the Christlikeness — in that action and honor all who display the image of God in the world around us.
In the time of the prophet Jeremiah, the Israelites were living in Babylonian exile. They had lost their homes, their temples, everything about their normal lives that they had taken for granted. Isolated, lost, and in a strange new world, they turned to Jeremiah to bring them a message from God.
To Aidan, Ben, Thomas, Sam, Claire, Michael, Rachel, Aidan, Christian, Landry, John, Katie, Allie, Jacob, Journey, and the rest of the Class of 2020. The story is just beginning, I am so incredibly confident that the best is yet to come.
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