"Well VBS is over. . ." That sentiment was all that was on my mind on Friday evening as the youth and young adult volunteers joined my family around our fire ring for s’mores and hot dogs. Some kids swam in the pool. Others played with Luna. But as I looked around the fire that evening, I could only think: “Another successful VBS here at Plains.”
The program is packed back into the basement closet and we wait for 2022 and a new program to surface that will transform the children’s lives here at Plains. As the church in a post-VBS community, we might begin to wonder: what’s next? How do we take the lessons and experience of VBS with us into the ‘dog days’ of summer and continue to build off what was started last week?
I think that the writing of Quaker Hannah Whitall Smith are helpful for us in this time. In 1875 she wrote the following words in her book, The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life:
To sum it all up, then, what is needed for happy and effectual service is simply to put your work into the Lord's hands, and leave it there. Do not take it to Him in prayer, saying, "Lord, guide me; Lord, give me wisdom; Lord arrange it for me," and then rise from your knees, and take the burden all back and try to guide and arrange for yourself. Leave it with the Lord; and remember that what you trust to Him you must not worry over nor feel anxious about. Trust and worry cannot go together. If your work is a burden it is because you are not trusting it to Him. But if you do trust it to Him you will surely find that the yoke He puts on you is easy, and the burden He gives you to carry is light: and even in the midst of a life of ceaseless activity you shall “find rest to your soul."
As I read, and re-read, those words it is amazing to me that Hannah was writing over 140 ago to me . . . and to us. Her words feel applicable and relevant to our faith walks today as VBS becomes yet another memory that we share with each other in the church. We wonder how will we continue to build off of what God started last week in the lives of those young children?
I hope that today you will take an opportunity today to sit with Hannah Whitall Smith and consider what she is saying. Consider what her words ask of you in relation to service, faith, and discernment?
Spend some time wondering and noticing where the places that you take the burden back from God in an effort to control it, and instead, leave it there. As you leave it, notice what God says to you and how that presence makes you feel?
blessings
Rev. Derek
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