“…they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
~Acts 14:22~

These every other weekends come around pretty quickly but not enough to seem like too much. I still dread going and suppose I always will. It’s not a heavy dread, rather it’s more like a faint one. But once I’m there I’m typically okay and then after the Saturday there’s only one more. I received a card in the mail acknowledging my one year work anniversary. It felt crazy to think that I now have another year of experience.

This passage I read this morning reminded me of something I read a few years ago. Back when Covid was happening in 2020, our church printed out the entirety of the services including the parts normally said by the pastor. There was a part in the All Saint’s Day service that completely jumped out at me. It was the part from the Proper Preface which is the part of the church service spoken right before communion.

“In the communion of all Your saints gathered into the one body of Your Son, You have surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, encouraged by their faith and strengthened by their fellowship, may run with perseverance the race that is set before us and, together with them, receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.”

I remember feeling something rather remarkable when I read these words: Encouraged. And while the encouragement came from the words themselves, the shock of them came more from what the words did not say. The lines, for example, did not go like this:

“Saints of God–Even though we are called the body of Christ, made up of brothers and sisters nearby and throughout the world, this Christian life is pretty much one of living life on your own. It’s not ideal, true, but that’s the way that it is. You will, over years and time, adjust. We live in a sinful world these days, which basically means nothing is ever right.”

I felt encouraged by the word that the faith of saints could encourage. I simultaneously felt uplifted but strangely seen in reading that it was communion and fellowship with the body of Christ that strengthens me and not my resolve to keep going.