Knots
Have you ever played the game of knots? It is one of my favourite team-building games. Everyone in the group takes their right hand and grabs the left hand of another person, reaching across and around the group until everyone is joined to two other people. It creates one huge knot. The task is then to unravel the knot without anyone letting go of hands. Leaders emerge directing others to step over, under and through tangles of arms and legs until bit by bit the knot is undone and you end up with a big happy circle! There are times when it can become frustrating and you just want to let go and give up, but teamwork eventually wins the day and you finish with satisfaction and triumph.
In the church we can often find ourselves tied up in impossible knots. Funny how that happens to a people who are supposed to live by faith. Aren’t we supposed to be the ones who trust God and experience peace all the time? Along come trials and tests and we get frustrated, scared and tempted to just let go and give up. We tie ourselves up trying all the latest approaches to church growth or church management or leadership or fundraising or ‘being relevant’ and find that the knots are almost hopeless to untangle.
Jon and I have now been in the Cariboo for nearly 20 years, a journey that still challenges me to walk in faith and trust in the God who started this ministry and has continued to sustain it. I guess God thought I needed a little reminding again this past week or so. Due to an error at our accountant’s office, our monthly stipend cheque failed to make it to our credit union and our bills were about to be automatically paid from our personal account. I began to panic. I knew the cheque was being sent by express post but had visions of bounced payments and huge interest charges. I didn’t know how our expenses had risen so high. I kept trying to pray and turn it over to God, to trust and leave it in God’s hands. I meditated on Proverbs 3:5,6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” It is one thing to know this. It is another thing to practice it with all your heart, but I tried. I had to go in to the Nazko band office in the middle of all my anxiety and collect a cheque for some beads I had purchased for the band. I knew that it would go a little ways towards helping my disappearing bank account. However, when I went to pick up the cheque I was shocked to discover they didn’t have the one I was expecting. Instead they handed me a cheque worth several times the one I was waiting for. I had completely forgotten that the band owed me a substantial amount of money for the registration for 10 women I had taken to camp earlier in the month! That’s why my VISA bill was so high and I was so broke! I practically leapt with joy and laughed at how God must have been laughing at me for my anxiety about it all. I’m usually much more on top of my finances than that, but I had overlooked what was owed me. God was on top of it though. In a moment’s time, all my concerns were wiped away. The knots were all untangled.
Later in the week, I had more reason to be in a tangle. My mom ended up in the hospital in ICU with pneumonia, but because God had reminded me of how faithful and trustworthy he is, I was able to face this greater situation with more peace and trust than the silliness of a missing stipend cheque and empty bank account.
In this ministry, I’m determined that we not get ourselves in knots and tangles. We are facing a lot of change this year. Changes can lead to the temptations to get into knots. We begin to worry and fret. Dave Webber is retiring in a matter of months. What if people think that Dave’s retirement is the end of the Cariboo ministry? What if people stop supporting us? No, they couldn’t think we won’t need as much just because the Webbers aren’t here could they? What if we lose profile because Dave’s articles aren’t in the Presbyterian Record anymore? How will the ministry change? Can it stay the same? Should it stay the same? How will we make it through this year trying to support three missionary families instead of two during the transition? We can let these kinds of questions keep us up at night stirring around and around in our heads, tangling our thoughts until they bind us up so tightly we can’t get unraveled; or we can go back to the roots of this ministry, birthed in faith in God’s provision through the people of God. Rather than worry, it is so much better to play the team-building game where we are all hand-in-hand, stepping up and over and through, slowing unwinding the tangles together. This team is made up of us who are here ‘on the ground’ in leadership and in the worshiping communities hand in hand with those who are geographically distant but spiritually near through prayer and financial support. Hanging on to one another, we cooperatively unravel the knots. We do this together so that in the end we stand in a triumphant circle looking at one another with joyful satisfaction at what God has been able to do through us all. So the only knots I want us to be bound in are the knots that help us to work together to build this team for God’s kingdom work here in the Cariboo. We will trust in how God works to provide for all we need in this year of transition and beyond because we are all in this circle and we invite you to not let go. Hang on with us and watch what the Lord does!
