The Year Everything Stopped

Do you remember all the excitement around 2020? A new decade was beginning, and more than any other time I can remember, people were ready to make big changes. I wasn’t immune to that feeling.
 
In my mind, 2020 was going to be the year our church took a big step forward. One of my first sermons of the year was called 20/20 Vision. I thought I was pretty clever. I laid out bold plans for the decade ahead: attendance goals, hopes for a permanent space (we were still meeting at Curley K–8 at the time), and new ways we would serve Jamaica Plain. If I’m honest, I was impressed by my own vision.
 
Then there were rumblings of a virus spreading across the world. I had lived through the bird flu, swine flu, and Ebola scares. This one would be no different. So we kept moving forward. Everything was going according to plan… until March 23, 2020, when the world shut down for “two weeks.”
 
Like everyone else, we shut down the church and went fully remote. Overnight, our 2020 vision went out the window faster than a Chick-fil-A drive-thru order at rush hour. We did the best we could with Zoom after-church hangouts, Zoom community groups, and more Zoom. Zoom on Zoom on Zoom.
 
And I remember thinking, “God, did you perform all kinds of miracles to bring us here to start a church, only to have it shut down in less than three years?” I wasn’t happy. It felt like God had pulled the ground out from under us. After all the work, the sacrifice, the money, the effort. Why, God? Many of us felt something similar in that season.
 
Looking back now, I can see that God was at work in the middle of a really difficult time. We didn’t just survive the pandemic. We grew in the years that followed and eventually found a building. But in the moment, there were times it felt like God had abandoned us. He hadn’t, but it felt that way.
 
This week we’re going to look at one of the most powerful moments in the life of the prophet Elijah. After incredible victories and undeniable miracles, Elijah finds himself exhausted, discouraged, and ready to give up. And it’s there, in his limits, that God meets him.
 
Join us for worship as we see what it looks like to accept where God has placed us and trust Him in the life we actually have.