When you set out on a long journey, the question surfaces almost immediately: are we there yet? Picture a family of seven packed into a van for a 6,000-mile drive from Colorado to Alaska, arguing every single day, only to realize that reaching Alaska was merely the halfway point. There was still the whole journey home. Turns out “there” depends entirely on where you are trying to get, and maybe one of the deepest spiritual questions you can ask is simply this: where is there, and where are you trying to go?
Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds you that, as a follower of Christ, you aren’t there yet. You live between promise and fulfillment, resurrection and redemption, between the first pangs of labor and the birth of new life. The Spirit is being poured out, yet creation still groans. People suffer, wars continue, hearts still break. But this groaning, Paul insists, is not the pain of needless suffering. It is the pain of labor, of all creation crying out, “Bear with us, God. Stay with us.” Waiting, then, is not passive and it does not diminish you any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. You are enlarged in the waiting.
“Faith is the decision to stay engaged and alive in the waiting, to refuse cynicism and despair, and to keep loving and hoping and just showing up even when the world gives us plenty of reasons not to.”
This is the tangible, messy hope you are called to: the kind that feeds people when they’re hungry, visits them when they’re sick, welcomes strangers, and forgives enemies. Hope is a verb, and so is worship. You gather not merely to feel inspired for an hour, but to see the light of God reflected in one another’s eyes and to remember who you are, foundationally loved. You aren’t there yet, but you are on the way, and because God bears with you, you can bear with one another. This is the heart of First Plymouth’s mission: to keep making room, to keep believing that every act of mercy is another glimpse of love being born into the world.
