The Year of Awe: Finding God in the Whisper, Not the Whirlwind | Passed By | Chad Belew

And as we've been having these conversations, I felt like things have been coming into focus.

Not a plan, not a strategy, not this big vision, but kind of a direction for us. There's a

story in scripture where Elijah, after everything falls apart, after his adrenaline has faded,

he's burnt out. He's done what he thought God asked him to do and it almost destroyed

him. He runs. And he runs away and he hides in a cave and he waits for God. And the story

says that there was a violent wind but God isn't in it. And it says there was an earthquake

and still God wasn't there. And then there was a fire and still God wasn't there. And

then finally there was silence. And in the sheer quiet, there was a gentle whisper. And

that's where God shows up for Elijah. Which has always made me wonder, how often do we

expect God to be in the grand force and miss God in just presence? Because if I'm honest,

these nine years of the arsenal have almost been nine years, have also been nine years

of deconstruction and reconstruction for me as a person in my own theology. When we started

this, I had no idea where this journey would lead us. I don't know that any of us would

have been like, "Yeah, let's do it." I didn't know what would fall away. I didn't know what

would remain. I didn't know what would have to be rebuilt. I just knew that I couldn't

keep pretending that certainty was the same thing as faith. And there were seasons where

it felt like things were unraveling, like beliefs I had inherited, images of God had

been handed, stories about who God loves and who God couldn't love. And there were moments

when I honestly wondered where this road was taking me. But somehow, I get through it

all, the journeys led us to some pretty beautiful places, a wider place, a truer place, a place

where love is bigger than fear, where grace is deeper than doctrine, where Jesus looks

more like Jesus than I was taught to expect. As I was thinking about the arsenal and thinking

about how things have gone, there's a story in the New Testament that I look at very differently

now, but I feel like it's a story that I can relate to. We enter the story alongside these

two guys. They're walking away from Jerusalem. And they're not rebelling. They're not rejecting

faith. They're just disappointed. They thought that Jesus meant one thing for their lives

and the cross shattered that expectation. Jesus had just been put on the cross. He had

died and these two men are walking away. Because what I thought Jesus was died. As they're

walking, the story says a stranger joined them. They talk and they process and they grieve.

They tell the story of their disappointment with this very person that they're disappointed

about. The text says something quietly just kind of devastating was they were kept from

recognizing him. Not because they were bad. Not because they lacked faith. Just they just

weren't ready yet. And they invite this stranger to stay. And they sit down. They kind of stop

moving. They pause. And they break bread together. And scripture says that when bread was broken,

that's when they saw it. The Jesus was sitting at the table. Jesus was the man that was walking.

The Jesus that they thought had died on that cross. Who they thought Jesus was had died.

But this Jesus that they'd walked with, they were able to speak to and share their grief

and their frustration and all the different things that had happened. They're walking

with him. They sit down. They break bread. And it says that they saw him. And then he disappears.

There was no plan. There was no explanation. No certainty. Just this realization that they

look at it. They were like, weren't our hearts burning within us while we were talking with

this man on the road? The meaning wasn't absent. The recognition came later. But the

story tells, I think what a lot of us have experienced. Because some of the most resurrected

lives I've ever encountered. Love, compassion, courage, humility. I found it in people that

I was told couldn't possibly reflect the image of God. Instead of pushing me away from Jesus,

it made me fall more in love with him. It widened my understanding of just how vast the love

of God really is. And I think when we start talking about this emotion of all, I think

that that's what all is. And you guys know this because you've been around for a little

bit now. But the scripture that shot my trajectory off on this idea of all was a scripture that

says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When we looked up the word fear,

it was your raw, which could be awe or reverence. And it was the awe of the Lord is the beginning

of wisdom. And maybe wisdom doesn't begin with answers. Maybe it begins with wonder.

And that makes sense to me now. I think that's what happened on the road to Emmaus. Tomorrow

we'll celebrate the life and the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. There's a line that's often

attributed to him that isn't as often quoted, but the line says the arc of the moral universe

is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think what's easy to miss in that statement

is that Dr. King believed that the arc bends because doesn't bend because we force it.

He believed that it bent because people stayed present because people kept showing up because

people chose love over fear again and again. And he said that this arc bent toward justice.

There was slow work, faithful work, all shaped work, work that he would never get to see the

end of. And for a lot of us, it feels like that arc is like, come on bend. Rachel held

Evans another author that I love that I feel like didn't get to see what she spoke to so

much because she died really early. She said that doubt doesn't destroy faith, it deepens

it. It's not the absence of faith, it's the evidence of it. And I think all works the

same way. It doesn't erase belief, it expands it. And what's fascinating is that psychology

is now discovering the similar, like something similar that researchers say that they found

that all often doesn't fully register them in the moment. Like it integrates into life

later. Like you experience something, you experience this moment, and you experience it,

but you don't necessarily register it or capture it. Like it takes a little bit. When we slow

down and we reflect, when we tell the story again, meaning it's often present before we

recognize it. Like awareness is there, it just takes time. It's the Emmaus road. So as we

step into this tenth year, which is crazy, I didn't want to give you a program. I don't

want to unveil a polished plan because let's be honest, you guys know me. But I want to

offer like an orientation. We're stepping into what we've talked about is, we've talked about

a lot, we're going to step into this year of awe. And not awe is like hype, not awe is

like a spectacle, but as a way of being a commitment to slow down, to pay attention, to stay open,

to trust that God is often closer than we think and showing up in ways that we didn't

expect. Because if if success were measured by certainty or polish, man, this place would

have stopped a long time ago. You don't have to laugh at that so hard. I hear you like,

yeah, yeah, it would have. But it's never been our metric. We've measured success by people

becoming more human by creating safety, by choosing love over being right. And I think

it's these these all moments that keep us choosing that path. Because awe reminds us that we're

part of something larger than our fear. Brittany said at the beginning of this, like, awe reminds

her of her smallness. That is that is the definition of awe is that you experience a

smallness, not not a crushing of, you know, not a bad smallness, but a smallness that

says that I'm, I'm connected to something so much bigger than me, that the community

around me is part of me. So tonight and every time we do this, I don't, I don't want to

give you answers. That's never what we're trying to do. But I want to invite you into

a posture that says this, what if this next year is about depth, not growth? What if presence

matters more than performance? And what if we stop rushing past what's trying to meet

us? Nine years in, we're still here. It's got to be a reason for it, right? As we step

into year 10, I think we're stepping into this year with, with wonder, like, what's one of

my favorite verses and Galatians is the way that Eugene Peterson translated in the message,

he says, that this resurrection life is not a grave tending life. It's not just getting

ready for us to die, but it is a life of wonder where we were, where you're saying,

what's next, Papa? What are we doing next? Where are we going? And I think that's what

all invites us into. So we're stepping into this year of wonder together because I think

relationships and community is the only place that you can actually have love happen. So

we get to go love well, we get to be who we're made to be. We get to experience fun together.

One of the things we've talked about with this idea of awe is, are there ways that we can