Our Job Is Finished, and yet.....

Coming up with morning devotions can be a tricky thing.  A month ago, I picked some pretty traditional passages from the Gospel of Luke and had the devotionals all set.  Then I got a email from Tim at the Folklife Center, letting me know that we'd be working on a lady's house that needed a massive amount of work.  Our job was to get things started so other groups could come in and finish.  This made me change the devotions to reflections in the epistles on faith, hope and love.  The idea was that it takes a lot of faith and hope to start a project and believe it will be completed by someone else in the future. 

Then Tim emailed last week saying the plan changed: we would be actually finishing a project that was started and  worked on by two prior groups.  I was concerned that the devotions wouldn't "fit" the experience.  On the first day, Tim was full of confidence that we would finish.  But as the week went on, it became clear that this was not the case, especially when we found rot underneath the bath tub and had to demolish the tub area and put in new flooring.

The bathtub rotting floor is and surrounding walls are finally removed

Chris works overtime, sawing some floorboard replacement

Many in the group really seemed to hope for some sense of accomplishment - to see a completed job that gives us all satisfaction.  Yet today, we left the worksite with a lot done, yet more to be done.  We would have to rely on faith and hope after all.  This reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite Christian thinkers, Reinhold Neibuhr, "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.   Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.   Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. "

The Bible is full of figures who faithfully worked for something only to be completed by the next generation.  Alison Weaver let us know that this was the experience of the Israelites wandering through the desert from Egypt to the promised land.  The ones who started never made it.  That was left to the next generation.

We can be really proud and happy for what we did this week.  There is not doubt.  I rarely have seen a group of people work so hard, putting in hours of careful, loving work.  Estill was so grateful.

On another note - this year, I remembered to bring five prayer shawls down with me.  I am so glad I did.  We gave one to Estill.  We also gave one to Greg, who is showed up today.  He is out of the hospital, with a diagnosis of an ulcer and some back issues.  We also gave one to some relatives of Estill who live up the hill from him, and are dealing with some serious health issues.  Mary and Deb spent a lot of time painting their house, which desperately needed it.   Thanks to all the knitters who do this important ministry.  Your shawls are making a difference.

Estill holding his prayer shawl

When we got back to the center, some took the tram ride at Pipestem Park.  Then we had another P-I-G basketball game.  Douglas won, with Deb coming in a close second.

The winners of the P-I-G competition

It's now time to pack our bags and head home.  Some of us are going to visit Margaret and Geneva Pugh, whose church we helped out two years ago.  She already baked a lemon cake and I have the feeling she'll be cooking up a storm for us, despite my telling her not to go to any trouble.  

There will be others with different plans.  We'll let you know how things go in one last blog tomorrow, to be written in Chambersburg PA.  We can't wait to come home and tell you all about it.

By the way, I did upload a video to Facebook that shows you what it's like to drive up to the worksite and goes around showing what we did in Estill's new home.  Check it out if you're on Facebook.

Sunset tonight

Good night one last time from West Virginia!