2024 Week 34

Hello, Springers!

Do you have a song that you put on repeat? Not an album but one song. What are the reasons we put one song on repeat? Sometimes I do it to get a song out of my head. Actually hearing it in our kitchen speaker turns it off inside my mind. But other times I put a song on repeat because I need to soak it in.

This week, I found myself soaking in a great tune by Sandra McCracken: We Will Feast in the House of Zion. It’s loosely based on Psalm 126. Like many great songs, it paints a scene for the listener, one of homecoming or restoration. We will feast in the house of Zion because we have been restored.

There is no backstory given in the song or the psalm, so the dark time is left to the listener’s imagination. But when you begin to look around at what is celebrated at the feast you get a clue to what the dark times were like. When she sings things like we will weep no more, you are the faithful one, bind us together, bring shalom (peace), you can imagine a dark time of crying, of people divided from one another, of people in turmoil, of backstabbing in the dark.

We long for a morning of peace and light. I imagine this scene in so many different ways. Sometimes I imagine it as a breakfast (not unlike Jesus’ restoration of Peter at the first men’s breakfast in John 21). We all have areas in our lives where we long for restoration – sometimes restoration with other people, ultimately restoration with God himself.

Along the way to the ultimate restoration, we need small moments of restoration that act like signposts to that final day where all is made right. One way that we do this in the church is to eat together. That’s one reason behind our upcoming season of Dinner BELL (Belong, Eat, Listen, Learn) on Wednesdays beginning August 28th. Save the date. Make time to come eat together with your family at Valley Springs.

Our ultimate restoration is found in Christ, and along the way, we have the opportunity to become a community of restoration.

in Christ,

Pastor Tag