Weekend of Mixed Emotions

By Michael Airgood

This weekend will be hard. That's just a fact.

Today I will preach a sermon at Pilgrims that David Goran and I wrote together.

We planned a sermon series for English camp, and after the accident I decided to preach through these sermons with our community instead.

As we prepared these sermons, they really felt like they would be perfect for English Camp. In hindsight, I can't imagine preaching any of these sermons for new people. They deal with the themes of tragedy, loss, death, and resurrection. They are deep and poignant sermons that help us all search out the pain and sadness in our souls and to move past it. David and I both wrote sermons and parts of sermons that are incredibly revealing and emotionally vulnerable for this series.

In this present state, each sermon fits perfectly with the needs of our community. These sermons were written for such a time as this. Today's sermon is mostly from David's point of view. It's a hard and a sad sermon, but it is a sermon of resurrection as well. It will be one of the hardest sermons I've ever preached.

An email reminder popped up in my inbox this morning that tomorrow is Illya's birthday. On Saturday we will attend the service in commemoration of 40 days since his death.

On Sunday we welcome a new mission intern. As we work toward normalcy, one of the normal things we do is welcome new mission interns. We are very excited to have her join us and to receive her gifts and graces. Her new face will help other new faces find a place. This will help in the healing process.

On Monday we will have our staff retreat day. We will begin planning for the future. We will move forward with a future and hope.

This weekend will be very difficult. It will have lots of joy and some sorrow. We put one foot in front of the other and we celebrate who our God is.

M. B. Airgood's Blog