Leaving Again

Today we are leaving another church. Our family is being sent out of First Presbyterian Church in the city of Columbia to start Grace Presbyterian Church in NorthEast Columbia. We have only been at First Presbyterian for seven months. We have always known there would be a leaving; we moved to Columbia to start Grace Presbyterian. Yet my heart is heavy today. It somehow feels hard to leave another church "family". Certainly not as hard as our first leaving of a church to move to Columbia, but still hard. I am ready to be rooted, ready to know and be known by others. Ready to rub shoulders with people weekly, some of whom I have only Jesus in common with them.

Many don't come to churches to visit and certainly not to find family. As a pastor's wife, I have to attend church. It is not a question for me. And this was a helpful reality for me that pushed me toward the biblical reality that Jesus wants us all to love his bride the church. But I have found that the bond of a church can be like bond of family. Things are not always beautiful, calm and serene. People with real holes and real wounds attend weekly, but the commitment of Jesus to love and to heal is only real when it is worked out in normal everyday lives bound together. And when you get these glimpses of gospel truth shining through...it is as beautiful as those rare moments when my four year old son tells my six year old son: "I don't just like you, I love you!"