BACK from THE HILLS
Psalm 25: 1-10
LUKE 10: 38-42
JULY 13, 2025
Well, we are back y’all … it frankly seems strange not waking up to the rising mountains off to my left and straight ahead you can see the Red Bird camp but those mountains with their early morning fog covering the upper levels of their greenery are truly special … those mountains make up the community surrounding the Red Bird Mission Camp.
You have to actually drive down miles of winding roads to get to your neighbors or to the store but when you wake up at Red Bird you know you will hear birds singing and soon the voices of teenagers who have dedicated their week to serving God in a mission project will fill the air. You know that you will see folks older than yourself ready to step out of their comfort zones to help total strangers because God has called them just like God calls all of us ALL THE TIME into action rather than into sleepy dormancy. For a week faces become friends, and you talk about your work projects, the people you are caring for, and perhaps about your churches back home. You play UNO at night.
And, you know when you get out of your bunk that the coffee machine is waiting down there in the Cardinal Dining Hall … but y’all need to know that God tugs at ya … down there … in Kentucky … in the hills and in the valleys … a place where you don’t have a fancy box showing electronic images controlled by a clicker that allows you to decide to turn and waste your precious God-given time watching and listening to talking heads spewing poison that intentionally makes you mad at other human beings whom God has told y’all to love. A box where you can turn to movies where people shoot each other up until someone … usually the good guy … wins. Up in the hills and down in the holler … you just feel so connected to God. You are in the middle of nature … you are with other strangers who acknowledge God’s love and have sensed God’s call into action. You hear devotional moments from teenagers … bow your head in prayer as folks from Ohio or Georgia or Alabama use their own words to connect with the Almighty. You can almost see God down there in the holler whether you going upstream or down God is with you.
David in today’s Psalm declared, “Make your ways known to me Lord! Teach me Your paths! Lead me in Your truth!” In the hills you can reflect and sense God … you can rediscover the Lord and not be distracted like Martha was. Jesus told her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things … but only ONE THING is necessary” and when you are in the Hills you have an amazing opportunity to remember that our faith … our God … Jesus … the Holy Spirit … and living out our faith is that reality. It’s God’s call … God’s expectation.
David also had folks causing issues in his time just like those divisive talking heads we have in our days because David asks God, “let those who are treacherous without excuse be put to shame.”
So, friends, is God a distraction to you … is your faith an afterthought? Are you overly worried about things to a level that has caused you to eliminate your God-connection. Are you so busy and consumed by your personal concerns and things with your label on them … that THE ONE THING that Jesus lectures Martha about … being connected with God … coming down from your own personally-focused hills to take up your cross and actually become a Jesus follower has become an AFTER THOUGHT? Are you leaving faith-projects, mission opportunities, and God’s needs in this world buried in some hidden place? Just so you can be YOU and not help THEM? Or even love THEM?
I think at times we need to shut down the world … close out the noise so that we can, as David wrote, “Put our hope in You Lord, ALL DAY LONG!” David writes about God’s faithful love and frankly … we need to escape at times to recover God’s love for our lives. You know the Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He RESTORETH my soul.”
Ah yes … the restoration we need in life; one of the side benefits of going for the drive down to Red Bird. You start to sense it once you are outside of DC. If you have made the trip before the scenery starts to become familiar. You know where you are going and start to count the miles making sure you remember that EXIT EIGHT IS GREAT so that you don’t have your nerves placed on edge after 10 hours on the road. You are headed to a place of restoration. A mission of service to carry out Scripture’s call with your own time and energy heading to a place where you can treat God as a priority.
Yesterday morning I wanted to stroll down the hillside and then descend the steep steps to the Cardinal dining hall … I was missing our roost for the last week in the Eagles’ Nest, which for most of our team was an appropriate name for our residence … a connection to home. We don’t always stay in the Eagle’s Nest while at Red Bird. It’s cabins are the furthest away from the dining hall but what a view!!
Next Sunday we will celebrate RED BIRD and our ongoing mission to Kentucky but today I will pass along one Red Bird story or two while also asking each of you to focus on life in general … your relationship with God and to contemplate how you escape the world for some God time but perhaps most importantly how you live your life when you return from whatever hills you escape to … when you come out of your serene comfort zones with God do you strive to reconnect with God and where does that put you? What mission can you take on for God … and perhaps for yourselves reconstructing your faith.
Jim made sure that he packed the elements for Holy Communion in his bags that he took with him to the hills of Kentucky. You see Holy Communion is important … it’s a sacrament not an added “oh no church is going to take more of my precious time” THING. After cleaning up our cabins … after packing up our cars … after thinking about the road ahead … we paused to reflect on God’s love for us through Jesus Christ at picnic table literally a few feet from the deep forest’s edge where you could discover a path deer created to move up and down the mountain side.
I opened up this Bible to read from Corinthians Paul’s reflection on Holy Communion … Paul, you know the fella this church is named after. Paul who had been one of the most vile attackers of Christians immediately following Jesus’ death and then His Resurrection when the world proclaimed “He is Risen” << He is Risen Indeed>> … Paul was known then as Saul … Paul was called by God on that road to Damascus and became the Paul we all know; a man of mission who didn’t allow personal struggles to stop him from paying attention to God.
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “I received a tradition from the Lord … on the night on which He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread and after giving thanks, He broke it and said, “this is my body, which is for you; do this to remember me.” Yes Paul valued Communion … Jim brought the Communion elements so we could value Communion along the mountainside in Kentucky. Paul concluded by writing, “EVERY TIME you eat this bread and drink from this cup YOU BROADCAST the death of the Lord … “
And, so today you each have an opportunity to join with Paul to broadcast the truth about Jesus … when you take the bread and cup whether here in church or those watching at home if you take a piece of bread or cracker and juice and water and seriously pause in worship when you eat and drink it committed in these moments to go forward in life to broadcast His death it is not that He died but that He lived. He is Risen! <<He is Risen Indeed>>. To share in God’s love for humanity in Jesus … that is why this is a Sacrament … that is why we need to rush away from the hills of the world that have distracted us back into the peace of God.
That is not your only opportunity for today. Each of you has before you opportunities to serve God. This church’s Vacation Bible School is days away and we still need ADULT volunteers of ANY AGE willing to give up a few hours for God during just five July evenings to help connect kids to Christ who just might be willing to go to Red Bird next summer to join teens and other youth who travel there each year to give of their time for God. WE need volunteers to get the church ready for Vacation Bible School and we need people asking kids to come. We need more folks for next year’s mission team … one week of escape to a place where you can’t hear the news but you can sense God. Is giving back to God with your time too difficult … are you too aligned with the world’s powers that you say no to God … no to mission … that you like to look down from your hill watching life and time go by but never devoting your energy to the God of creation?
“The Lord is good and does the right thing.” David’s words but this week at Red Bird those words had a direct correlation to the experience of a mission team from Ohio.
Last Sunday I was thrilled to see kids’ faces that I recognized from our 2024 Red Bird trip. Kids from Ohio had come back to Red Bird … I spotted their pastor and went up to greet her. Imagine … just imagine … teenagers willing to not only give up one week of their lives to do hard work in mission for strangers but to come back a second year to take it on. They were the group that last year I got shouting a response to my OH … they shouted I-O. And, when I led devotions last Sunday night they were ready to respond to my call again OH-IO!
But they were responding to God not sitting back leaving it to others. God had a plan for that team this year … they were supposed to be at Red Bird THIS YEAR THIS WEEK and working for a woman who had been a widow for nine years. These teens … this pastor from Ohio … helped bring God’s peace to a poor Kentucky woman who had not let go of the loss of her husband for NINE YEARS but something happened this week … David tells us “All the Lord’s paths are loving and faithful to those who keep His covenant and laws.”
The kids went to help rebuild a home but something connected and days into the week this woman’s inner soul was changed. She told the pastor her story and suddenly she was helping, working alongside the kids, her sorrow was broken into joy … the kids and the pastor witnessed the change as they fixed her home. This woman had pushed her sorrow behind her and as David would say, she “put her hope in the Lord all day long. Remembering God’s compassion and faithful love! Knowing she was remembered by God through this mission team from Kentucky who were there giving up a week of their time for the sake of the Lord’s goodness.” The woman and the pastor have exchanged phone numbers and contact information and will stay in touch.
That’s what mission work can do … it’s not about us it’s about those we serve because we never know whether we will be the ones who were supposed to be there showcasing God even if it it with a simple hammer and nail, paint brush or helping with VBS recreation.
Are you worried and distracted by many things or are you ready to make the better choice but following Jesus … taking on the challenges and needs of this church … going to Red Bird … following God’s call … coming out of the hills you have been isolated in where the world runs your life and choosing to let God lead the way!
God loves you and God is calling today, tomorrow and the next day … you might be the one person who is the answer to another’s struggles. AMEN