This letter is from Hannah Joy, a best loved child of God chosen to receive his grace and share with you the Good News. To the community of believers in Concord who associate themselves not only with United Baptist Church and each other, but also with Jesus Christ, our savior and Son of God; to all of you my dear friends, Greetings.
I have not been able to be with you these past few years, but I have not forgotten you and I have tried to keep up with the news of the church and individuals. My heart has enjoyed how you have continued to work out your faith and the will of God through happy times, and it aches for you when I hear of your trials. Though I am far away I can see his love and wisdom in your lives at every moment. Your community has always given me the courage to chase after God and the desires of my heart. As He promised, He has never left our sides.
As He has been working in you, He has been working in me. He is leading places I never dreamed, but I understand His love and mercy more and more everyday. His enduring faithfulness encourages me to pursue His love and develop my gifts to honor him.
I feel I am wandering in the desert, away from my family, away from my community, and away from fellowship in order to follow God and his plan for my life. Along the way He provides me with the people, experiences and wisdom to uphold me in faith so I may preserver in the lessons He has for me. This time he used a very unlikely novel to illustrate His love for me. Seeing God in unlikely places is not by its self unlikely, I remember spending some time looking at the post modern blockbuster, The Matrix, in search of “Christian meaning” and finding a picture of what a savior looks like in the naïve character of Neo. In a novel by the unlikely author, Kurt Vonnegut, God showed me a picture of what salvation means for my life.
The novel Time Quake tells a story about what happens when the last ten years repeat causing all the inhabitants of earth to consequently repeat their own lives, exactly as they had done before, making all the same mistakes and successes. This type of repetition puts free will, here simply referring to the human capacity to choose, on hold for the duration of the time quake. This means that no one had to make a choice they had not already made in the past ten years, which also means they were mostly likely unaware of this repetition and therefore equally unaware of the time quake ending and free will kicking in again. Imagine the chaos when the bus driver woke up and realized he had to choose which way to steer the bus, and that he probably realized too late and thus crashed into the nearest telephone pole or office building. There is hope, though, as one character is able to recognize the situation and helps people by reminding them of their free will by saying, “you were sick and now you are well; and there is work to do.”
When I read this, I also heard John the Baptist yelling “Prepare the way of the Lord,” and Paul when he says “we are no longer slaves to sin,” and Jesus when he healed the lame man at the pool saying, “Get up and carry your bed home!” These people and the character in the book were all saying the same thing; “There is hope and you have a choice about it!” It occurred to me that we are all given the ability to make our own choices by God, but it is not until we understand our freedom that our free will can be exercised. The time quake is like sin, because every one in the time quake was a slave to what they had done before in the same way we are slaves to our sin. When we are stuck in sin we are doomed to make the same mistakes we always have, and it is not until someone comes along and reminds us that we have free will, that we can exercise it and avoid driving out bus in to the nearest brick wall. There are many people who remind us of our freedom, but it is Jesus who made it possible.
We are sinful people and there is no way we can avoid the death sin leads to on our own. So God, in his love for us made it possible for us to be with him anyway, by sending his only son to die in our place, and then rise up again to be with his father in heaven, so that one day we might follow Him. This is the truth that sets us apart from the world and gives us the freedom to make choices. Once we know and believe these things we cannot loose our salvation or our free will. But like the time quake when the people forgot about free will, we sometimes forget about our salvation and the weapons it provides against spiritual attack. Since Satan cannot take us away from God, he takes advantage of our forgetfulness.
When we forget what Jesus did for us, we let in fear and doubt. Sometimes we feel like we have no power to protect our families when they are hurting or sick, or maybe we just feel bad for no identifiable reason. And then even if we try to be faithful in prayer and worship we feel like God just doesn’t hear us or, worse, will not hear us because of our sinful state. We wonder if we are doing the wrong thing or if God has left us. We know we should seek God’s face but we have forgotten where to look. Homes are burned or flooded. Things are stolen. Jobs are lost. We have a bad day…for a week or a month. And people leave us.
All of these things paralyze us to how the Holy Spirit is moving in our own lives and the lives of the people around us. We have all seen how many innocent, obvious, secretive, and seductive lies Satan has used to distract us from the freedom we once enjoyed to exercise our free will in the presence of Christ. When we do forget, we need someone else, sometimes the Holy Spirit, to remind us we have salvation and are still being held firmly in the grip of our Heavenly Father.
My dear friends, we, the community of the United Baptist Church in Concord have been under this very kind of attack. Possibly since the deacons sponsored the year of GOD FIRST our community has been attacked at our very heart. Our community has worked hard to make relationships with each other our priority. We have tried to be like Christ in caring for one another and gathering together in His name. We have taught, corrected, and encouraged one another as we were commanded. We invested our lives in one another and poured out everything there was to give. So, I see now the most direct and damaging attack has been the loss of so many members of our community over these past few years.
It started with the passing of Jim Kent, then the Bardwells leaving, and the Crews’ leaving, Lorinda and Alyssa, and recently the passing of Marilyn Graff and Mother just to name a few. All of these people filled specific ministries as well as having strong personal relationships with many members of our community. Their absence has left our body a confused pile of Swiss cheese. I know having our young people away at colleges and other adventures affects our community similarly, because I am so warmly welcomed back when I am able to be home with you. I am sure many of you can identify more friendships you miss, and other trials you and your families have dealt with these last few years. But as for us as a whole body, if “UBC is relationships,” how damaged are we to have lost so many relationships? You were sick from the schemes of the devil, but God has made you well.
God has not forgotten his people in Concord. He is with you always. His faithful love endures forever. “In his kindness God called you to his eternal glory, by means of Jesus Christ. After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support and strengthen you and he will place you on a firm foundation” (1Peter 5:10). Though Satan would tear us apart, God is calling his people back together. I am deeply grieved by the loss of so many relationships, but I think God has used this time to ‘clean house’ to make room for something wonderful. God has made you well, and there is work to do for His glory.
I have also heard that through these times we have continued to discuss what our church should look like to best feed our community and the people of this generation. We are still fighting against what the Church has always been for our parent’s generation and struggling toward the hope of what our church for this generation needs to be. We have been fragmented, but we are beginning to heal and maybe now is time to regroup and become the church God is dreaming of us to be. You have encouraged me so many times to chase after God’s will for my life let me encourage you to do the same. Let God’s will for our church be the desire of our heart, and let us have the courage and the resources to chase after His blessings for our community. You were sick and now you are well, and there is work to do.
The more I talk with my generation about their faith and what aspects of fellowship and community are important to them the more they talk about relationships. They like what Jesus said but hate the religion that repeats it. We see the relationships Jesus had with people and how he taught simply through them. Very few people have a problem with what Jesus was teaching; we only have a problem with what Jesus was; the son of god or son of man? We seem to have a problem with the ritualized parts of most Religion, but we like the relational faith that Jesus exemplified. One of the reasons I like the community at UBC so much is that we have never been far off from practicing relational faith with a motto of “UBC is relationships…and then some.”
I do not know exactly what comes next. I encourage you to look around and listen for the voice of God; wait for the Lord together in prayer and fellowship. “You were sick, and now you are well, and there is work to do.” Never forget that you are a part of God’s family; his best loved children; called to be a part of this body of believers. Nor forget that God has given our body every part it needs to glorify him. So, look around and let the feet be feet and the ears be ears and the mouth, the mouth. Continue to work out you faith in fear and trembling, so you may honor God will all your hearts, minds, spirits, and bodies. I will continue to pray for you and look forward to seeing you all again. Thank you for letting me share with you what God has put on my heart. Amen.
Hannah Joy Hopkins
