Friendship is hard. And yet for most of us, we want, wish, and hang onto good friends who know us well and walk with us in hard times. Sometimes what can make friendship hard is knowing what to say, what to do, and how to support each other when life gets hard. Job 2 gives us a picture of friends who realize that part of being a good friend can be found in showing up, and being present.

It is our 25th anniversary! 25 years ago God planted a church here with a heart to be a Christian community who worships a God who can provide stability in a world that feels like it is always on the move. And on a day like today we can and will name ways that God has been at work in the last 25 years, and look ahead to where God is leading us in this next season. We also know as churches that an easy rut to slide into is to only celebrate numbers. How many came to that program, how much money, how many baptisms. And while we want to name that every single person who comes here can be a life that God changes, God isn’t leading us into this next season to just be numbers. He is leading us to be transformed.

Faith asks that we trust in that which we cannot always see, and to believe in a God who can do things. So perhaps naturally, we will have questions, we will doubt, there will be things that we wonder about. And sometimes it can feel like if we have questions something is not right, or we are not trusting enough, and yet God invites our questions, God invites our honesty, our reflections, our wonderings.