Greetings OCC Family,
Last Week, I got a very concerning text from a mama. It was one of those messages you feel before you finish its entire reading. Her daughter, a young woman I mentor and love, attends Old Dominion University. That morning, her professor cancelled class, so she went to breakfast off campus and that is when the shooting occurred at her school.
I sat with that for a while. Thinking about how life can change in a moment. One shooting, one decision, one change in plans, one diagnosis, or one new awareness, and suddenly life is different. It touches all of us because we can relate to life having swift transitions. Lives, one way or the other, were changed that day.
Many in our community are living in that kind of reality right now. A conversation with a doctor. A change in a relationship. A door opening or closing without warning. An updated immigration status. Life can happen in ways that ask us to adjust quickly, to feel deeply, to go on in ways we did not expect. Life is something else sometimes and we must remind ourselves again that God is with us.
Isaiah 43:2 speaks to when we find ourselves in these “life is something else times.” We can anchor ourselves in this biblical truth of Isaiah. The verse says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned.” The promise does not avoid the waters or the fire, rather it speaks of God’s presence that is with us in the middle of it.
So, wherever life has found you in this season or even in this week, in the middle of news you did not expect or changes that came suddenly, remember that you are not alone. God meets us right there, in the middle of it all. God is with you, present in what you are facing, present in what you are feeling, present as you make your way through. The waters may come, the fire may come, yet God is our boat that will see us through.
Trusting God Has Us,
Rev. Tam
