Holding Each Other Up

This is a cross-post from my reflections last week in the Second Page, our church newsletter. After our wrote this, another one of our beloved members Janelle Bevers passed. Her funeral was on Saturday, and was the fourth funeral our church was a part of last week.

What an incredibly hard, but good week. And what a church.

There is a memorable scene in Exodus 17 where the Israelites are making their way through the wilderness and are suddenly attacked by Amalekites. Moses dispatches Joshua to go out and fight while Moses climbs to the top of a hill from which he has a bird's eye view of the battle. There from the top of the hill Moses' raises his arms, the staff of God held high above his head. "As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning," (Ex. 17:11) Two men, Aaron and Hur, then come to Moses' aid. They take hold of Moses' drooping arms and help him hold them up the rest of the day, all the way to the setting of the sun. And this is the way that Joshua and the Israelites won the battle against the Amalekites.


It seems an unusually large number of Second B families are in the midst of some battle right now. This week we bury two Second B members, Randy Juergens and Bill King. Other members are doing all they can to choose life against the onset of Alzheimer's, cancer, and other debilitating afflictions. Pillars in our church are in the waning days of their lives. Some among us carry that most sorrowful burden of having to watch their own children suffer.


And it is here, in the midst of life's greatest struggles, that I see you visiting one another. I see you cooking for one another. I see you sending prayer cards to one another. I see you holding and hugging one another. Simply put, I see you loving one another.


I want you to know what a tremendous privilege it is to pastor a congregation full of Aarons and Hurs - companions who, when the weight of the world is too much for us to bear, walk up the hill beside us to help carry the load. And you do this all day long, till the setting of the sun, and then even beyond, back down into the night and through the valley of the shadow of death. What faithful friends you are.


Not long ago I stood in the kitchen of one of our dearest members who had just lost her husband, and I heard the words I will no doubt hear hundreds of times over the course of my pastorate at Second B: "If it wasn't for this church I don't know where I would be."


And I thought to myself, "Thank God, we don't have to know."