The story continues
The church continues
This is the last day of the devotional and the first day of everything that comes next.
Right now, as you read this, the church is meeting. In Lagos and Seoul and São Paulo and Nairobi and Mumbai and Beijing and a thousand other cities and villages you have never heard of. In languages you cannot speak, with customs you would not recognize, singing songs that would be unfamiliar to you — and saying the same creed, breaking the same bread, praying to the same Father.
Right now, as you read this, someone is being baptized. Someone is hearing the gospel for the first time. Someone is dying in a hospital and a pastor is holding their hand. Someone is kneeling at the front of a church and standing up different. Someone is in a prison cell memorizing scripture. Someone is picking up a baby no one wanted. Someone is preaching on a hillside. Someone is translating a verse into a language that has never had it before.
The story is not over. The story is not even close to over.
You have read the first two thousand years. The chapter you are standing in is not written yet.
The same God who appeared in an upper room in Jerusalem, who called Paul on the Damascus road, who found Augustine in a garden, who warmed Wesley's heart on Aldersgate Street, who appeared to Teresa in the silence and sustained her in it — he is at work. Now. Here. In you and around you and ahead of you.
He is building his church. He has been building it for two thousand years. He is not finished.
Go. Be part of what he is building.
The story continues.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
— Jesus, Matthew 28:19–20
“Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things which I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.”
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Not: I was with them in the first century. Not: I will be with you eventually in the kingdom. Always. Now. Today.
The same presence that appeared in the upper room, that walked the Emmaus road, that stood on the beach with breakfast already cooking — that presence is the constant in every story you have read. In the arena with Polycarp. In the tower with Luther. In the cell with Bonhoeffer. In the dark with Teresa.
Always.
You are not alone in this. You are not starting from scratch. You are not the first to doubt or struggle or fail or recover and keep going.
You are in the oldest story in the world, carried by the strongest chain ever made, sustained by the one who will be with you to the very end.
Go.
The story continues.