Devotional from Pastor Dave April 11, 2024

This week we enjoyed an overnight visit with a friend and former parishioner from England. John was a 14-year-old member of one of the five churches I served for a year in Cornwall, England, when I was fresh out of seminary. John is now a journalist living in London. He currently covers politics for The Mirror and has met prime ministers and traveled all over the world. His office is in the Parliament building (Big Ben!). He attends a church in the neighborhood where he now lives.

We have kept up with each other over the years on social media. Back in 2011, John was visiting the US and came to visit us when we were living in Knoxville. This past weekend, John was in Nashville visiting some friends, and he saw that we weren’t living too far away. So after taking in the downtown Nashville scene and then visiting Dollywood on Sunday, he came to see us.

We caught up on his family, our family, and the church in the village where he grew up (a church called Wesley Rock, not because of its preference in worship music but because its pulpit is built on top of a big granite boulder that John Wesley preached from when he visited the area in the 1700s). I took him to the brow (too bad the W road was closed). I toured him through the church and introduced him to some of the staff. We enjoyed some meals together, and then he headed back to Nashville to fly back home.

Do you ever marvel at how you have come to know some of the people you know? For example, how on earth is it possible that I know a British political reporter like John? How is it, for that matter, that I know a Grammy-winning church musician like our organist Michael Huseman? How is it that I know a downtown high school baseball coach and community organizer who also serves as our church’s youth director, Drew Barton? How is it that I know someone like Lou Maynard who has taught Sunday school to children and visited church members in their homes for over 60 years? How is it, for that matter, that I know you and that you know me?

The answer is the church. The church is the common thread across so many of the people that I have come to know, that I probably wouldn’t ever have come to know if it hadn’t been for the church—the family of faith in Christ across time and place and even across “the pond.”

Jesus was once told that his family was outside waiting for him. He asked, “Who is my family?” And he looked around at those who were with him and said, essentially, “here is my family. Whoever does the will of God is my family” (Mark 3:31-35).

I am so thankful for my family in Christ and for the bonds that we share as brothers and sisters together in him. How blessed indeed are the ties that bind our hearts in Christian love.

Who are you thankful for this day? Who comes to your mind that you haven’t you seen or talked to in some time? How might you reconnect with them? I hope you will find a way to do so. I can tell you it might just make your day.