Turning the Page
By: Russ Ramsey
Vision Sunday (which we celebrate on the last Sunday of every August) is, in many ways, our “New Year” celebration as a church. Our community here at Oak Hills has so many individuals and families living by semesters that the end of the summer is, for all practical purposes, the end of the previous year, and the beginning of September is the start of a new one.
The past year has been one of great blessing and great struggle for many. Some here at Oak Hills got married, others welcomed their first child. Some have grieved over decisions their parents or their children have made, others over decisions they themselves have made—most often in ways no one around them would ever perceive. Some acquired their first job out of college, others saw their jobs eliminated by the economy we’re in. You name it, someone at Oak Hills has been through it—some to their utter joy, some to their deepest grief.
I don’t know if you’re like me or not, but I welcome a new year like the turning of a page. It’s not as though the previous year never happened. Like the pages in a book, the previous year informs the coming one—giving it a context, foreshadowing some of what’s to come, introducing new characters, moving the unfolding story along.
With a new year comes new opportunities, new characters, new hope that old struggles may lose some of their power, fractured relationships might find some healing and, most importantly, that the Author of the Story we’re all living in might continue to build in us wisdom, insight, perspective and faith we didn’t have the year before.
I’m excited about where the Lord is leading the church in the coming year. I’m excited to see new Champions for ministry stepping forward with hearts eager to love and serve the people the Lord has brought to us as well as those He brings us to.
My prayer for the year to come is that, more than ever, we would be a church on a mission to know and make known the astonishing grace of God.
Pastor Russ Ramsey
