The Long Obedience

Pastor James closed the Ordinary Time series with the verse the whole series had been building toward: 'Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.' He noted that Paul doesn't promise the harvest will come quickly — only that giving up guarantees it won't come at all.

He told the story of a couple in the church who fostered five children over nine years before finally adopting one of them — years of paperwork, heartbreak and a system that didn't move at the speed of love. 'Nobody claps for year six,' James said. 'Year one gets a casserole. Year six just gets tired.'

The message named a specific danger for a church like Cedar Hollow: it's easier to show up for a Serve Homewood Day than to show up for the same struggling neighbor every week for three years. Both matter, James said, but only one of them is glamorous, and faith mostly grows in the unglamorous one.

He ended not with a call to try harder, but to not give up on the ordinary thing already in front of people — the marriage that's fine but not great, the kid who's still not talking to you, the job that isn't a calling, just a paycheck done with integrity. 'The harvest is real,' he said. 'It's just not always this Sunday's harvest.'