I guess it was when the group sang “I’ll Be on My Way” as the offertory. They sang it beautifully and with gusto. That’s when it all came together for me—the whole service collected into a moment, the ethereal weight of it all on my mind or heart or spleen or spirit—the readers, the singers, the seniors, the parents, the families, and the church—emotions all around and the Spirit moving.

“I’ll be on my way,” they sang, and I had heard it before, as had many of you. I had watched as our youth sang it in Boston during that pre-pandemic tour, and it was beautiful then, but it was something more on Sunday.

Sunday’s service was all about our teenagers (and some pre-teens); it was about the ministry of Connor Bell and Emily Elizabeth Casteloe with those teens; it was about the love of the church for our youth. It was an hour filled with memories shaken out of the years. There before us, the teen and toddler, past, present, maybe even future. Sunday was about the life we share in Christ and the way a moment of worship can hold eternity, how NOW can hold all of the past and all of the questions about what will be.

Sunday, we stood at an unseen door with Connor, Emily Elizabeth, and our seniors. And the door was open.

Here’s what we know: On this side of the door, God’s love and ours. On the other side of the door, God’s love and ours.

In Christ,

Mark