Are You Ready for Adventure?
This Sunday we will celebrating our week of “Discovery on Adventure Island” at Vacation Bible School that we have been hosting from June 21-25. The theme is “Arise and shine” and the corresponding verse for this theme comes from Isaiah 60:1
“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.”
This verse is reminder that we have been called to “arise and shine” to spread the Good News! When Christ called the first disciples in Matthew 4:18-22, they dropped everything and followed Christ, but I have to wonder if there wasn’t at least a little hesitation to “arise and shine” to the work before them. This summer I have started to re-read some of my favorite books and some of my favorites come from the J.R.R. Tolkien series, The Lord of the Rings. The first book in the series is titled The Fellowship of the Rings and it begins with a calling. One young Hobbit, named Frodo, is burdened with a difficult task to stop evil by delivering a ring to a mountain in Mordor, a place of evil, to be destroyed. Frodo knows very early on that this means leaving his place of comfort, the Shire, into unknown territory in order to save the world. He has a choice: 1) stay home, remain comfortable, and await the inevitable (the end of the world as he knows it) or 2) take off on this adventure of danger, unknown, and discomfort. Frodo chooses adventure, but he doesn’t go it alone. Others join Frodo and thus you have the The Fellowship of the Rings.
We too are called to adventure much like Frodo, to confront evil in this world and to participate in the saving action of Jesus Christ, but we don’t go it alone. Christ has built for us a fellowship and we do this together. On this adventure we will encounter discomfort and we may even wish at times to go back, but we can’t! At one point in The Fellowship of the Rings, Frodo Baggins tells Gandalf the wizard, that he wished the ring had never come to him and that he never had to go on this adventure, but Gandalf responds by saying, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that’s been given us.” What are you going to do with the time that has been given to you? Will you retreat into your comfort and await the inevitable or will you join me and the rest of Lake Cities United Methodist Church on an adventure to transform this world by making disciples of Jesus Christ!
Join us this Sunday, June 27th, as we celebrate Discovery on Adventure Island at both the 8:30 AM service and a special 10:45 AM service with music with some of our kiddos and their families from VBS! Oh yeah I almost forgot… we will have the Kona Ice Truck here with us following the 10:45 service.
