Looking (again)
This new reflection on “looking” serves as a companion to a piece I wrote in 2023, written at a similar emotional crossroads. Then, we were beginning to understand that what we had before the pandemic was not coming back - that our call was to move forward rather than look back. Now, as we celebrate 150 years of ministry at Sterling United Methodist Church, we find ourselves in that same sacred space of reflection and renewal. Once again, we are invited to honor the past with gratitude, but to keep our eyes fixed on what God is doing next - to look forward with hope.
In 1875, a handful of Methodists in Guilford gathered in a one-room schoolhouse to pray and sing and build something they could not yet see.
I doubt they imagined airports or highways or whole neighborhoods springing up around them. They simply did the next faithful thing.
And that seems to be how God works most often. We plant seeds in one season that we may never see bloom, trusting that what God waters will take root.
Over the past 150 years, Sterling has been burned down, built up, moved, expanded, remodeled, and renewed. Each generation faced its own moment of "What now?" and each time, God showed them the next step. The people didn't always get back what they lost. But they found something new: new spaces, new ministries, new ways of being faithful.
Of course, looking back also reminds us of what we miss. Friends who once sat beside us in worship but have moved away. Ministers who have guided us, some of whom have gone on to glory. Ministries that were vibrant for a season but reached their natural close. These losses are real, and they leave tender spaces in our hearts. But even here, God's promise holds: the story is still unfolding, and life continues to spring up in new ways.
The past has beauty, but it isn't where God is leading.
Isaiah's words remind us that God's future is never just about survival; its about restoration. The prophet envisions a people who take the broken pieces of their world and rebuild, not for nostalgia's sake, but so that life can flourish anew. A "well-watered garden" is not yesterday's beauty preserved under glass - it is living, growing, producing fruit today. And tomorrow.
The ruins are being rebuilt. The walls are being mended. The streets are being restored. And the future is bright - not just because it will look like the past but because the same faithful God goes before us.
That is the gift of celebrating 150 years - not a pause button or a victory lap: a chance to plant again. To choose service, to choose compassion, to choose mercy now, trusting that God will bring a harvest in ways we can not yet imagine.
The story is not over. What we are looking for is not in the past. It is here, now, and ahead - in the living Christ who makes all things new.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.”
If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech;
if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted,
your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon.
The Lord will guide you continually and provide for you, even in parched places.
He will rescue your bones. You will be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water that won’t run dry. They will rebuild ancient ruins on your account;
the foundations of generations past you will restore. You will be called Mender of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Livable Streets.
Isaiah 58:9-12