Piloting Faith: Letting go of your life to find it...

A Word for the Day...

Dave checked his email just before leaving for the office on Monday morning. That was how he discovered that he and his colleagues had just been laid off. The email told him to stay home, and they would mail his personal belongings from his desk to the home address they had on file. They also thanked him for his twelve years of service.

Shocked would be an understatement of how Dave felt in receiving this news. Shock quickly shifted to anger. Anger became anxiety. What would he do next? Who was he without that job? What did this mean for his future?

As the days turned into weeks, and he went to dozens of job interviews, he felt something slowly awakening in him. He began to sense a new kind of creative energy bubbling up in his spirit. He would go to job interviews, and he was offered a number of opportunities…but none felt right.

One morning he went on a walk through the center of his town. In the window of a storefront was a small, decorative sign that said:

“Sometimes you have to let go of the picture of what you thought life would be like and learn to find joy in the story you are living.”

He reflected later that reading that sign set him free. He asked some challenging questions of himself about the kind of life he wanted to live, and then he took the steps to make it happen. In his case, Dave found his calling by working with troubled teens in a summer Outward Bound program. He knew he would never work an office job again.

I believe God designed all of life to be FOR us. The world is designed in a “God-centered, God patterned” way that hopes for our wholeness and works for our happiness. Our role is to be open to the adventures that will come.

I pray this week you embrace the joy of the story you are living…or you decide to live a better story.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

Gracious God,

We long to know you. But we are so often blind to your presence, your will, and your ways.

Teach us to see you in the world and in us. Teach us to see past our biases, our anxieties, our assumptions and our fear of each other. These days if seems as if the very salvation of the world rests in our ability to wake up to your Love within us all.

So, help us seek understanding as if it was a long lost treasure, waiting and available to all of us. Make us "woke" or keep us searching until we find you and are finally transformed.

Amen.

- (adapted from The Prayer Wheel by Patton Dodd, Jana Riess and David Van Biema)