Did you know when you split our church, we’d end up feeling lost and disconnected?  Did it occur to you that your actions would cause so much pain?  When you planned and strategized how to push that train of change off its tracks, did you care that souls would bleed?  Holding on so tightly to a way to beat the vote, did you remember it was the majority?  Those you had worshipped with for years, decades even, did you pause?  Did you reject a possibility that your actions might hurt more than you anticipated? Or did you just not care?

The strong moved on.  Your actions just a bump in the road.  Their faith never wavered.  They shed the ties to just a place, and held fast to their beliefs and each other.  They never looked back, like Lot leaving Sodom and Gamorah.  They did their best to start new as they felt led.

But some of us faltered.  Some of us just ended in between.  Not looking back but not moving forward.  Somehow disconnected.  Searching for that home.  Searching for community.  Faltering.  Struggling to hang on to that need and desire to have a church home.  Wandering in and out.  Watching friends leave for good.  Fighting to survive by shutting down parts that care or were connected.  Did you even pause?  Did you foresee the aftermath of community torn.  Or selfishly cut your losses?

God will lead us.  We will get up and dust ourselves off.  Knocked down by the sucker punch you threw.  Slower to bounce back than some.  Wounded more deeply perhaps.  Though wandering and searching, still moving.  Not out yet.  <God lead us.>< God heal us.>. <Your will be done.>

When wounded soldiers are left behind, angels cry.

 

By Vicki L Pugliese