See this?

This is a ceiling.  It’s nice, with long rows of beautiful wood and strong support beams.  But that’s not why I love it.  I love it because when I sit in the sanctuary and look up, I think of fingerprints.

Soon after I arrived at Rosewood Lane, I visited Glenn and Ruby in their home.  Glenn would pull out old photos of the building through the years and show me how it had been adapted over time.  He and others spent many hours on these labors of love.  Glenn passed away several years ago, but that ceiling with their fingerprints still stand, providing sanctuary to people seeking God.

Ultimately, the Church is not a building; it is people.  What lasting impressions will you leave on the lives of the people around you?

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all…  

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ…

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

(Ephesians 4)

— Pastor Debi