Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

"Is the Lord among us or not?" Exodus 17:7b
A week or so ago I was sitting in my office with a man whose family we have applied to sponsor as refugees to Canada.  We received the news that the cue we have our application in has pretty much stopped moving so the General Council Office was recommending we change our application from the church's Sponsorship Agreement Holder process to the Community Sponsorship process.  When we first made the application five months ago, we were expecting an 18 month process starting then.  We now know that it will likely take at least two years, from now, to bring his family to safety.  God was there in the pain we were feeling.  God was with us in our disappointment and heart break.  God was in his patience, compassion, understanding and strained, but persistent hope.  We are rewriting the forms.  We're doing what we can.  We will restart the process.  God was there, bringing us companionship, hope and light.
Every week I hear and watch dozens of volunteers from several different organizations put in hundreds of hours between them running a soup kitchen, a food bank, a thrift shop, a clothing give-away, sometimes nursing stations, and tax accounting.  God is alive in the purpose those volunteers feel.  God is in the laughter they share.  God is in the needed support and assistance the people receive.  God is in the community built through service to one another.
Every day I sit down with scripture and journal and I ask for what I need for that day.  I bring my grief, my pain, my struggle, my discouragement, and somewhere in the prayer, reading and silence, something shifts, something small, but significant.  A still small voice speaks to me and I move forward lighter, more prepared to be who I need to be for the day, hopefully, a little more patient, a little more tolerant, a little more compassionate, a little more gracious, perhaps than when I sat down.  God is in the movement from darkness to light, from overwhelmed to able, from isolation to community, from discouragement to hope.
I am not always so blissfully aware of God's presence, but I do return.  Some days (weeks... months...), it requires real discipline, but I return home to the core of my faith.  God is with us.  We are not alone.  We believe in something more than our own small selves; we are connected to something greater than great that reaches back beyond the beginning and forward beyond the end; we participate in something good beyond imaging; and we can make a small difference that makes a big difference.  And even when I can't see the difference, I trust, and I do the best I can to do the best I can to return love for hate, compassion for anger, hope for despair, peace for violence.  Once again, I do not always do this well, but I return.  And I trust that I participate in a community that does the same.
If a community wants to go forth and proclaim the Good News, it needs to know, deeply, what the Good News is.  It needs to be motivated from that core.  We can't proclaim salvation if we haven't had a glimpse of it... that would make us hypocrites.  And we need to act from that core, not from fear, not from frustration, not from isolation and arrogance (some misplaced belief that we know what's right for everyone).  We need to experience God's profound love for us and want to share that love.  People who feel that love can change lives, starting with their own.  People whose lives have been changed by that love, can change the world.
Mission begins in God's steadfast, abiding love active in our lives and you and I perceiving it.
So, the first step in adapting to ministry in the 21st Century is to affirm and articulate our own experience of God's abiding grace, as individuals, as a community.  How have we experienced God and how is the world better for that experience?  How do we nurture a place in ourselves and in our community in which God can be experienced?  How do we affirm that experience and help people to understand, express, and live out of that experience?