Called to Journey Forward 

This weekend, my spouse Sadie and I will stand in Bethany and say yes to one another. We have been legal partners since 2024, but soon we will gather with our family, friends, and church community to celebrate our marriage.  

It feels fitting that we’re celebrating during our Called for More worship series. Because being called for more doesn't mean becoming something entirely different. Oftentimes it means stepping more fully into the life that is already unfolding around us.  

As we’ll find in our reading next week from Exodus, sometimes being called for more also means taking the next step even when we cannot yet see where the path is going. The Israelites in Exodus found themselves in a terrifying position. Behind them is Pharaoh, in front of them is the sea. They have left behind the life they knew, but they have not yet arrived at the freedom they were promised. 

There are smaller moments like these in all of our lives when we find ourselves between what was and what will be. A family grows; a job ends or begins. A diagnosis reshapes our understanding of the future; a child becomes an adult. A community changes; the world changes. Exodus reminds us that faith does not mean knowing exactly what happens next; faith means taking the next faithful step. 

When God leads the Israelites out of enslavement, their freedom changes the way they are able to live together as people. In this way, while our faith is personal, it is never only private. The love we receive from God is meant to become love we practice. The generosity we experience is meant to become the generosity we offer.  

This is one reason I love being part of a church community. We don't all stand at the same place on the journey, but we journey together. We practice the radical generosity of believing that there is enough grace to go around. And we ask, together: How is God calling us forward? 

This next weekend, as Sadie and I prepare to make our promises, I find myself thinking about how strange and beautiful it is that love keeps calling us forward. Marriage doesn't mean arriving at the finished version of a relationship. It means continuing to learn from one another. There is always more love to practice, more grace to receive, more healing to pursue, and more ways to participate in God's work in the world. 

That is what Called for More means to me. God looks at us with all our complicated stories, gifts, questions, failures, joys, and hopes and says: There is more life ahead.  

Perhaps the next faithful thing for you this week is to make that phone call. To apologize, to ask for help, or to welcome someone who has been standing at the edge of the community. 

Perhaps it is to give generously because what we have was never ours alone. Or maybe it is to speak up for someone whose voice is being overlooked. Whatever that step looks like, you don’t go alone. 

The God who made a way through the sea is still making ways through places that seem impassable. And the God who calls us for more is not finished with us yet. So, church, let us go forward. Let us trust that God is already there. Because wherever the path leads, we are called to go there together. 

Peace, 

Pastor Katie