Dear Harpeth Hills Family,

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the long to reach the Mountain, to find the place, where all the beauty came from, my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home. For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. Psyche from “Till We Have Faces,” by C.S. Lewis

For what do you long? Safety? A cure? Justice? A entire church gathering? More time with a loved one who is gone?

In Luke 8, we find Jesus at peace in a boat that experienced fishermen believe is about to sink. Peter, the strong disciple, quakes with fear and anxiety. Fast forward a few years. Stephen is strong in his defense of the faith, and then he is gone. We see a persecuted and scattered church. Next is the amazing church in Antioch. Barnabas is sent to investigate and upon seeing the grace of God, “he was glad.” Acts 11:23. In Acts 12, James is dead and Peter arrested, but now the Peter who shook Jesus awake is asleep, chained between two guards.

What does the “grace of God” look like? How can Peter sleep in the midst of such adversity? Perhaps it is the longing for home. Maybe “the church” is a picture of the place where all the beauty comes from—the place where we know we are welcomed and loved. The place where there is peace.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:1-2

Jesus is our past, present, and future. We are all his hands and feet. We love you and long to see what “the grace of God” looks like in the future at Harpeth Hills.

-Your Shepherds