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THIS WEEK AT A GLANCE
SERMON SERIES - WEEK 9
FEATURED UPDATES
75TH ANNIVERSARY OF GEECC
Save the Date for November 6th! We will be celebrating the 75th Anniversary of GEECC! More information to follow.
We are also asking you to upload pictures and stories that you have from over the years at GEECC. You may upload these things HERE or bring them into the office.
We are excited to start celebrating with you!
A LETTER OF FAREWELL
As I write this farewell letter to you, my dear Glen Ellyn Covenant Family, how very appropriate it is that I find myself immersed in one of the Apostle Paul’s letters as I also prepare to teach our elementary children for the last time at this, my beloved church home. Paul begins his letter to the churches and Jesus-followers in Rome and remind them – and us – about the basics of what it means to follow Jesus.
First, a hard truth: Life doesn’t always go the way you planned or the way you hoped. Well, isn’t that the truth!? None of us planned or expected most of the events of the last 16 months: a worldwide pandemic that led us to remote learning and working, and church at home, many losses, and sad, poor health situations, including my unexpected surgeries and the death of my father. Nor did we plan that just as we seemed to be coming back together and having some semblance of “normal” again, that God would call me away to a new place. But that is still a blessing – when God allows hard things in your life, He does not waste them. He uses them to grow you, move you, change you – to make you better able to serve and love Him. (Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.” In the Bible Promises for Kids version, it adds: “I will change you on the inside and make you better able to serve Me.” I have always loved that God Himself will make me better able to serve and obey Him!)
Some other hard things that we encounter in life are different and come because of choices that we make – choices that may often be better called “SIN.” Sometimes we don’t even know we are making a bad choice (sinning) at the time it happens. Maybe we carelessly break something, or we laugh at something someone does without realizing that we are not laughing with them. Sometimes we see something on the internet or television that we later realize we should not have seen at all. When these things happen, when we understand or realize that we have done something wrong, we feel pretty badly about ourselves. It can make us feel like we’ve failed, and that makes us worry that we aren’t good enough.
But whenever we feel this way – like there’s a great big wall of sin and disappointment between us and God – we need to remember these things: First – this wall has already been broken down for us, forever, by Jesus. God sent Jesus to be our Savior. Jesus went to death on the cross to pay the price for every wrong thing that we have ever done – before we have even done them! This is how we can be forgiven for our sins and how we can have a close relationship with God forever. The Apostle Paul remind us and assures us that NOTHING can ever get in the way between us and God.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depths, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NIV)
The bottom line to remember is God loves you no matter what. I’m holding on to that truth very tightly as I get ready to begin my journey to my new home in Georgia.
As I depart, I thank God and I thank YOU – the people of Glen Ellyn Covenant Church – for allowing me to help our children learn to love God and love others. I have never once considered this to be “just a job.” It has always been the best answer I could make in response to God’s personal call upon my life.
I am very blessed and privileged to have been called to serve God’s children here in laughter and in tears; through skinned knees, broken bones, scary illnesses, new babies, and heart-wrenching losses; through first steps and first lost teeth, to first days of preschool, kindergarten, and so very much more. I give thanks to God that He would choose to use ME – ordinary, frail, imperfect me – to help guide this generation, our church’s children, to seek to KNOW God, to GROW in their faith and Bible knowledge, and to SHOW that love in service to others.
Remember, as I leave now, it is because when God tells us to “Go,” we are to go; and when God tells us to “Do,” we are to do! I leave you with very simple closing words that may convey some of the deepest wisdom and truth for us – at the most basic level, because I am, after all, simply a children’s minister: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way; To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
With my love, and not goodbye but until we meet again,
Pam Powell
Director of Children’s Ministries