Midweek meditation from Pastor Dave June 26, 2024

Vacation Bible School is in full swing this week at Signal Crest! After weeks of prayer, planning, and preparation, we have had close to 100 kids registered to attend, and we’ve had at least 50 youth and adult volunteers helping out!

It’s a SCUBA themed VBS this year where we’re taking a deep dive into friendship with God. Walking down the halls feels like walking inside an aquarium! The sanctuary is decorated with an oceanic spread from side to side. There is one big blow-up shark all by itself which I’ve been calling it the “lone shark.” “Sea” what I did there? 

We’ve been learning and singing new praise songs led by our newly-named official Children’s Director Tracy Gartmann, experiencing the Bible stories in exciting new ways with Tricia Earl (actually getting inside the belly of the big fish with Jonah was especially awesome), memorizing scripture passages with Courtney Malone, exercising our imagination with Katie Edgemon and Hailey Tull and our bodies in recreation with a great group of dads, and indulging in some tasty tidal treats with Lisa Charlton and Debbie Matthews. A boatload of thanks to everyone who is helping out in so many ways!

Each day has a different focus on friendship with God. Monday’s focus was that God is a friend who is real and whose presence with us we can feel with us through the ups and downs of life (like the prophet Elijah experienced). Tuesday’s focus was that God is a friend who loves us and calls us to love others, even those we may not like (like the people of Nineveh, whom the prophet Jonah didn’t like at all!). Today’s focus is that God is a friend we can trust in the midst of the storms of life (just like Jesus was in the boat with his disciples during a storm at sea). Tomorrow’s focus is that God is a friend forever, because Jesus’s death and resurrection offers us the gift of eternal life. Friday’s focus will be that God is a friend for everyone, that “everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Friendship with God involves some of the same kinds of things as friendship with people. It’s important in our friendship with God, for example, to spend time together, in worship. It’s important in our friendship with God to communicate regularly, through prayer, not only by sharing with God what is on our hearts and minds but listening to what is on God’s heart and mind. It’s important in our friendship with God to do things that show our love and our gratitude. And it’s important to share with others—friends, family members, and more—“what a friend we have in Jesus” (as the old hymn has it).

So how about you? How is your friendship with God going? And how might you take an even deeper dive into God’s love for you and grow in your friendship with God?