09/24/2024
Our church is abuzz with expectant celebration. 100 years have come and gone. 1924-2024. Ten decades. 36,500 days. 876,000 hours. But who’s counting?
People are celebrating, honoring the past, grateful for those who carried the baton of faith before us. We have held reunions, parties, and celebration dinners. Friends from previous eras have reunited. Memories have been resurrected. Laughter has filled the halls. Praise and gratitude have ascended to the heavens.
For a month we have been building up to this coming Sunday’s commemoration of our history and launching into our future as a debt-free church. The past and present join together as we step into the future. We will burn the mortgage, dedicate our lives, and cross the finish line in order to get back in the starting blocks, ready for the next leg of the race God has set before us.
But when the celebration ends, and the calendar turns to the next day, what then? The decorations come down, the building is cleaned up, the table and chairs are put away, and life gets back to normal. What then?
I love a good party, but parties never last. The mountaintop experience is great. The scenery is exceptional. The air is cool, clean, and crisp. But most things don’t grow on the mountaintop. They grow in the valley.
All through life we experience the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, the peaks and valleys, and everything in between. The question is: How do we build a life that grows in the valley, celebrates the victories, and endures the ordinary?
Here’s my suggestion to you. When the cake is eaten, and the party streamers are taken down, find joy in the routine. Build your daily schedule where routine becomes a railway to run on and not a rut to fall into.
Our routines can become monotonous ruts that are hard to break out of, or they can become train tracks to mobilize our future. Mike Murdock once wrote, “The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.” Future Hall-of-Famer, Patrick Mahomes said in a recent interview, “I try to just focus in on being in the same routine every single day.”
Jesus had His routines. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35, ESV). “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read” (Luke 4:16, ESV).
If Jesus needed the normalcy of routines, so do we. Celebrations are great. But life grows in the routines of planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting. In fact, when we are faithful in the rhythms of our daily routines, we have a whole lot more to celebrate at the top of the mountain. Happy 100th Anniversary, E91. Thank you to all who have, and continue, to plant and water, while God brings the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6).
