God goes before us

I was listening to one of our leaders this week share of a visit to Orchard Hill Church made a year ago from a land owner from Maine who leases farmland locally to some of our farmer friends who use the crop profits from the land for ministry efforts within our church's partnerships in Haiti, Mozambique, and the Walnut Neighborhood.  During his visit to the Cedar Valley, this land owner took a tour of the Walnut Neighborhood and exclaimed with surprise that his great-grandfather had been a pastor at a church in this very neighborhood and had prayed regularly for the neighborhood.

I wonder how many people over time, like this great-grandfather, have been called to the neighborhood, obediently playing a part in the larger, unfolding drama of Christ's restoration plan through the course of years.

Twenty years ago, in 1994, God called a group of visionaries to birth the Walnut Neighborhood Association as part of an effort called The Village Initiative.  God also called a group of people to start a Christian Community Development Board at that time in the Walnut Neighborhood and to launch its first program- a transitional home for homeless moms and children called The House of Hope.  I was a young youth director in the neighborhood at the time, and I involved our youth in some of the Village Initiative and House of Hope projects, all without really knowing or clearly understanding much vision of such efforts.

Fast forward twenty years to 2014, and God has filled me with dreams, hope, and passion for Christ's restoring work in lives and in this neighborhood through church-based Christian Community Development.  I would never have planned this call with all of the brainstorming time you could have given me.  I could never have connected any of these dots. I wouldn't have imagined owning a home in the neighborhood.  I wouldn't have imagined this journey into Christian Community Development.  But, I am so grateful for it and for the journey in better "seeing" God, others, and myself.  I'm thankful for whatever part God has for me to play in His plan.  I want to be obedient in that call and recognize that my primary role is to keep scattering Kingdom seed while God Himself, in His timing, will be the grower and harvester.

So many people have come and gone in the Walnut Neighborhood over the past hundred years, but one thing remains constant- God's presence, God's faithfulness.