Every once in awhile, we are reminded of just how awesome God is in the lives of his people. This week, one of our own had a sudden, dramatic tragedy occur in her family. Her 26-year old sister had a stroke and was rushed to the hospital in Boston. What a blow, right?
It happened so fast, that she did not even have a chance to find the church’s number to call for prayer. As she rushed out the door, she called a former member of Heritage and asked them to pass the information along. Even though the former member called one of our deacons’ wives instead of calling the church or my cell, the information got to us, and then things started happening.
Lori, the deacon’s wife mentioned above, contacted me and we worked together to get in touch with the congregation via phone and email to ask for prayer and to rally around this family. Emails and phone calls went flying. People volunteered to watch kids, to provide meals, to drive if the family needed to be transported anywhere.
By the time I had a chance to contact the sister’s pastor, our church was already in a high level support mode. Prayers were going up, people were suggesting ways to help not just the parents but the kids. It was quite amazing.
My wife and I are going to stop over tonight to visit with the family for a brief time and drop off a meal, but it is so good to know that this kind of stuff is not dependent on “the preacher.” Regular, normal people (pastors are ABNORMAL by nature apparently) jumped at the opportunity to be Jesus’ hands and pour out love.
This is what a faith community does. It is people walking together, journeying with each other. When we have those “high times”, we are there. And when we face those “low times”, we are there.
Time and time again, people tell me who caring our church is, how focused on relationships we are. This is not just some kind of “puffed up” praise, but it is the reality. We intentionally focus on being Christ to one another, and in times like this it becomes apparent that His Spirit is at work.
I could not be prouder (in a good way) of our church.
I have a couple questions for Pastor Erik, but I do not see a contact e-mail address at this site. How can I contact him?
I monitor the blog regularly – so you can throw questions up as comments if you don’t mind others reading them.
For more private stuff, you can email me at pastorerik@hbc-nh.org.
I will add a link to the “who is this guy?” section to my email address.