This is not the end

‘This is not the end.  This is not the end of this. We will open our eyes wide, wider.’ (Gungor)

Today we arrive, not so much at a finish line as a starting point.  As we open these amazing new facilities God has provided we mark the end of a journey of dreaming and planning, praying and strategizing – demolishing and building.  Along the way we have been stretched and challenged in ways such that we will never be the same again.  As we have been building new spaces, God has been building a new people. 

But this is not the end.

It’s important that we mark this moment; that we take time to look back and give thanks.  As one person put it, ‘Gratitude not expressed is thanks not given.’  There have been so many ‘only God’ moments along the way, many which we have documented and will share in coming weeks.  We can truly claim that God’s gracious hand has been upon us (Nehemiah 2:18).  We know its grace because the favor we have received, we never deserved. 

But this is not the end.  This is not the end of this.

While it’s important we celebrate this moment, we cannot stay in this moment, or worse, live in the many moments past that led to this point.  We are a pilgrim people called to live out of, rather than in the past.  These new facilities, just like Newlife – Pac Pines and the new congregations we will plant over coming years, are not for us but for ‘those who are to come.’  You see, for the last nine months we haven’t been building a monument, but new spaces for a movement of God.  We are a pilgrim people – people always on the move, peering over the horizon for the ‘what’s next’ of God.

This is not the end.  This is not the end of this.  We will open our eyes wide, wider.

Today we celebrate the goodness of an ‘abundantly more than we can ask for or imagine’ God (Ephesians 3:20).  And so we look back and celebrate, we also look forward and anticipate.  With God-honoring faith, faith that itself is a gift from God, we see the thousands of souls celebrating new life in Christ in our new baptistery.  We see the hundreds of young women and men who will hear God’s call to plant new churches, establish new ministries, lose their life for the cause of justice and in various ways take up their cross and follow Jesus wherever he leads.  We see many, many more occasions of God doing what only God can do.

You see, this is not the end.  This is not the end of this.  We will open our eyes wide, wider.