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A Note from Pastor Leslie
This is a season of life in our family that is bringing with it a lot of change. Jordan has just started his second year (senior year!) across the street at ASMSA, and his academic schedule in addition to his social schedule keep him busy and on campus almost all of the time. Daniel has just started his Freshman year at Lakeside High School, and between school and extracurriculars and an active social group, most days his greatest need of his parents is for us to be his Uber driver, transporting him from one place to another and back again. More than once in the past month, either Jeff or I arrived back home from dropping Daniel off to spend time with his friends and discovered that we had the house to ourselves. Just the two of us. I’ll be honest- at first, we weren’t entirely sure what to do with that!!
As we are getting glimpses into what it will be like to have an empty nest, family time becomes more precious. One of the sacred times we have as a family is the time we carve out each week to eat a meal together and watch a new episode of Apple TV’s show Ted Lasso. There’s plenty of language in Ted Lasso that is not, as I say, pulpit appropriate. But the lessons it teaches, they will preach!!
One of the new coaches this season began a recent episode with the intention to stop automatically saying “no” to everything, but instead to start with a “yes”. Because Ted Lasso is entertaining television, that wasn’t without hitches; because Ted Lasso is good television, it wasn’t without incredible growth for the characters and the team.
Because I am not just a consumer of good television, but also a pastor and a theologian, it made me consider God’s answers to us. Don’t get me wrong- sometimes God answers our prayers with a holy “no”. But in my experience, even God’s “no” turns into a “yes” that I never saw coming.
In Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, he writes to the people,
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you,
Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.”
For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.”
For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God.
In Jesus, he reminds the people, every one of God’s promises come true. In Jesus, God is proven faithful, reliable, dependable. And because of that, we can relax. We can “say the ‘Amen’”, or in other words, we can co-sign that God is, indeed, worthy of our trust. This is not a promise that life will always be easy, nor that we are always going to get out of life what it is that we most want. It is a promise that, whatever happens, God will work through it to fulfil the promise of life, and life eternal.
I can’t wait to see you on Sunday!
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