Lost or Certain About the Future?

The time has come to get back to the blog now that I've got a week under my belt on my new job with the Virginia United Methodist Homes.  I'm still going to be sharing my stories, but they will come from a variety of new settings and places - yet still with the same goal of trying to impact (or I guess I should really say, transform) the world as a follower of Jesus Christ in the United Methodist tradition and person still trying to be the best lay leader and lay servant that I can be. 

Before I left my position with the Virginia Conference UMC, I agreed to write the devotions for the International Bible Study lessons for September in The Adovcate, our Conference news magazine.  This series of lessons focuses on the 30th - 33rd chapters of the book of Jeremiah. That task turned out to be much harder than I ever imagined, in part because of the emotions connected with leaving a place of comfort for adventures in a new, unknown world.  The story I was living felt too much like the times Jeremiah was describing!  Since The Advocate will be out soon, I decided that the way to get back to the blog was to share what I had written with you.  If you subscribe to The Advocate, you can read ahead!   

The lesson for next Sunday, September 7 comes from Jeremiah 30:1-3, 18-22. The passage begins:

“The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: 

Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you.” 

(Appropriate words for a blogger,right?)

This time of the year always reminds me of returning to school.  I find myself reminiscing about going back to class, new things to learn, and new adventures to undertake.  Various scholars tell us that Jeremiah was a very young man at the time of his call.  Some think Jeremiah may not even have been 20 years old when God instructed him to “write in a book” all the words God had spoken to him.  I wonder if he might have been more interested in going back to school than announcing God’s judgment on the nations.

I was feeling lost back in the fall of 1979 when I left the comfort of Henry County and headed to North Carolina to college.  I didn’t know a single person who was attending the same school, but something about the campus the first time I set foot on the property made me feel it was where I was supposed to me.  My mother did not seem to feel the same way when we moved into the dorm.  She kept noting that I didn’t have the same type of clothing or jewelry that the other young women had.  I don’t think I had ever heard the description of “preppy” until then. I knew about overalls and steel-toed safety shoes, not espadrilles, madras plaid, or ribbon belts.  On her first visit back to campus, my mom handed me a few things she thought I needed:  a pink Izod shirt and a gold add-a-bead necklace.  At times, I really didn’t feel that I fit in, and the shirt didn’t help.

What felt safe when I was missing the security of my home community, what reminded me most that I would move beyond the loss of friendships to new relationships - from feeling desperate for a return to the life I had known to a new way of being, came from a ministry intern at the Wesley Foundation.  While on a retreat that first fall of college, we celebrated Holy Communion on the beach.  That was the first time I ever remember being called by name as I received the bread and juice.  Oh how powerful that was!  I had been lost in a world that was changing dramatically.  I was young, but God called my name in a new way. Sounds a little like Jeremiah, doesn’t it?  I was reminded in that moment – in a way I will never forget - that I was a child of God and covered in grace because Jesus had died for me.  I wasn’t called to write the words God spoke that day in a book, but they have been written on my heart ever since.  I was no longer lost, but certain of God’s promises.