“Reset: Return By Another Way” with Rev. Lisa Yebuah and Congregant Cris McFarland

For the last couple of weeks here at the Southeast Raleigh Table over the month of August, we have been talking about resets.

What does it mean to stop and to pause so that we can actually take stock of what God is up to in our lives, how we have had encounters with Jesus over the summer that can help us that can help us not return to patterns that might not be so helpful as we move from summer into the fall.

That we don't have to go back to life as usual, which sometimes actually doesn't feel like life.

We get to the end of July and some of us begin to dread what it is to move into this month and then to get to the end of the month and wonder, what happened to August? Like might as well take out your Christmas trees now.

We are almost there.

And then the astrologers come and they disrupt maybe the way in which we think we have to return.

Because after having an encounter with Jesus, it says, upon entering the house, these astrologers who had been sent by Herod on a secret mission, upon entering the house and recognizing something about the Christ child, God wrapped in flesh, their sensitivities, Their level of discernment shifts and changes that in the midst of a dream, after having an encounter with Jesus, they recognize it is not the voice of Herod that they need to heed to, but instead the voice of God.

And though they return back to the same place, they return to the same place, but by another way.

They return to the same place but by another way.

In July, if you were with us here at the Southeast Raleigh Table, we had the sermon series called Practicing the Practices.

In July, you learned these other ways of prayer.

You learned these other ways of rest.

You learned these other ways of taking silent moments of solitude.

You learned these practices so that we would not go back to life that is not life, but instead, These practices were going to open us up to hearing the still small voice of God or God's voice as a mighty roar or the text message of a friend or that deep thing within you that tells you, this is not the only way that my life can be.

But here's the thing about practicing the practices and talking about resets.

What good are they if our lives never change? What good if we send to people the podcast about prayer and about stillness and about rest, and yet we do not believe that somehow an encounter can actually shift what my Monday can look like.

That maybe just taking the first step is about us heeding the voice of God and taking the first step.

So the first Sunday in August, we talked about Isaiah chapter 55 of a God who has an imagination for life that we should not toil.

That God actually believes that our lives are not just simply to become modified or extracted, that we can come, buy, drink water without price.

That God is like, when I offer you something, I offer you that which seems too good to be true, but actually is.

Can you actually believe that you can live into that? Then the second Sunday of August, Pastor Raquel preached from 1 Kings 19 of Elijah who was looking for God in all of these expected ways that Elijah had experienced God, but not recognizing that God can also come to us in the unexpected ways.

That God can come to us in the ways that maybe we didn't have to drum up God's presence.

that God might come in the silence or the hush, that God might come in the community that surrounds us, that God might come in the silence, that we allow ourselves to let God speak to us as opposed to believing we always have to say something to God.

And then the third and fourth Sundays, which some of you have said have been your favorite Sundays as we've sent your children in this place.

Our children have been a part of the reset of resetting our imagination for what this world can be.