It's a funny thing when hope pops up when you least expected.
Chester's family and I were setting up the church tonight in preparation for his memorial service tomorrow evening. This is always an oddly complicated task physically, emotionally, and spiritually. One new layer of complexity is that we now have the chairs set in a new configuration so that we can use the screen and projector.
When we first derived this arrangement, we ended up with one or two fewer chairs than our normal setup. It also looks as if the room is more limited in terms of seating space.
The family is anticipating a very full house for the service which is why they are using our facilities (we have one of the largest rooms in the neighborhood and we're within walking distance of most of Chester's friends and family). So, when I heard myself telling then on Sunday that I would have all 150 chairs set up, I wasn't really sure if and how that would actually work.
Come to find out, the 150 chairs actually fit better in this configuration than the old one. They look more inviting and create good traffic flow patterns.
Sitting there tonight feeling sad and frustrated about the whole situation around Chester's death and feeling the grief of his family and friends, hope popped up. It came in the form of being able to see the church set up like this every Sunday and people coming to fill the seats for worship, fellowship, and discipleship.
Could it really happen? Could we need this many seats each week? It seems so distant yet, tonight, seems only inches from reality.
I guess that's a definition of hope itself --- seeing the nearly impossible within reach.
As we look out on the sometimes bleakness of the situations we find ourselves in, may we have the vision needed to live in hope and therefore work passionately that we might see the nearly impossible come into our grasp.
Thanks for reading,
Jeff
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