Carried By The Wind
From Ordinary Grace · 17:13
Show by UsedToGuy
📍 📍 📍 There's a line from The Sopranos that has always stuck with me. And yes, I'm about to quote The Sopranos in church. 📍 The line shows up after Tony Soprano has been accidentally shot by his Uncle Junior. Tony is in the hospital, badly injured and recovering from a near-death experience. He's weak. He's not in control. For a man who spends most of his life trying to control everything and everyone around him, it is a completely different position to be in. And while he's lying there in the hospital, someone has taped native American saying to the bulletin board in his room. His nephew Christopher notices it and reads it aloud: “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.” Tony doesn't know who put it there. And the show never really gives us a clear answer. But the saying stays with him. Later, Tony becomes much more interested in the first half of it. He tells everyone around him. “You go about in pity for yourself.” But I think the second half is where the real wisdom is. “And all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.” In other words: I can become so focused on what has happened to me... so focused on what I've lost... so focused on what isn't the way I wanted it to be... that I fail to notice that something is still carrying me forward. And Our Uncertainty I wonder if that isn't a danger for us in this congregation right now. I can see it. I sense it too. It comes up in almost every conversation I have with people sitting here today. And I am guilty of it as well. Can this church survive? Will it still be here in five years? What happens when the people who care deeply about this place aren't here anymore? Who's going to do all of this? Where are the new people going to come from? What happens next? Those are real questions. And the simple answer is: I don't know. I wish I could stand here and tell you exactly what this church will look like five years from now. I can't. I wish I could tell you exactly who will be sitting in these pews. I can't. I wish I could tell you exactly what ministries we'll have, exactly who will lead them, exactly how everything is going to work. but I can't. And I think sometimes our uncertainty becomes fear. And fear can very easily become self-pity. We start looking around and thinking about everything we don't have. We don't have enough people. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough volunteers. And now... we lost our pastor For seven years, we had somebody standing here. Somebody preaching. Teaching. Encouraging us. Challenging us. Comforting us when life got hard. Reminding us why this church matters. Reminding us why our faith matters. And now he has moved on to something new. We are happy for him. We want him to succeed. We want God to use him wherever he goes next. But that doesn't mean we don't feel the loss. Things aren't the same. We don't know exactly what comes next. We don't have the person we've depended on for seven years standing here anymore. And if we're not careful, we can start telling ourselves a story. Look at everything that's happened to us. Look at everything we've lost. Look at how hard things are. Maybe our best days are behind us. Maybe there's nothing left for us. Sometimes... we go about in pity for ourselves. And you know what? Maybe sometimes we're justified in feeling that way. Because grief is real. Change is hard. Loss is painful. I don't think God asks us to pretend otherwise. But there is a difference between grieving what we have lost and living as though everything has been lost. Because it hasn't. Pastor Scott left. God didn't. Our leadership changed. Our mission didn't. One chapter of this church ended. But our story isn't over. And lately I have started wondering if maybe we've been looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the question isn't: “How are we supposed to survive without him?” Maybe the question is: “What did God, in the form of Pastor Scott, spend seven years preparing us to do?” Because the more I think about it, Following Jesus the more I think about the disciples. Imagine what it must have been like to follow Jesus. For roughly three years, Jesus was right there. They traveled with him. They ate with him. They listened to him teach. When they didn't understand something, they could ask him. When they were afraid, he was there. When they made mistakes — and they made plenty of them — he corrected them. When they encountered someone who was sick, they watched Jesus show compassion. When they encountered someone who had been pushed aside by society, they watched Jesus welcome them. When people were hungry, they watched Jesus feed them. When they asked how they should pray, Jesus taught them. When they argued about which of them was the greatest, Jesus reminded them that greatness comes through service. And I have to imagine that after a while, the disciples became comfortable with the arrangement. Jesus leads. We follow. Jesus teaches. We…
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