Just a few weeks ago, a friend invited me to a worship service held at a house church, and I jumped at the chance to go. Like many of us, it was the first time I had been to a corporate church setting in forever, and by forever I mean since the fourteenth of last March. While I’m grateful for the existing online church platforms we have access to, and even more grateful for my pastors and their diligence to reach their congregations; I admit that I thought I might just cry getting to finally attend an in-person church service again.

Throughout the scriptures, Jesus proves to be an excellent storyteller Himself, using storytelling as His preferred medium of teaching. He utilized His words to reveal wisdom to those around Him, to convict the proud, and to uplift the hurting and broken. At EPAGA, we aim to do the same. We are asked to tell stories, just as Jesus did: our testaments of the miracles and transformation that He’s accomplished in our lives.

Let us not grow weary of doing good. Out of all of the emotions and feelings we can all testify to experiencing as of late, weary is surely one of them. Weary of the unknown, weary of the news, weary of facemasks, weary of the smell of cheap hand sanitizer... the list goes on and on.

In such an incredibly loud world, it can be easy for us to lose sight of one of the simplest things that God asks of us: our attention and our time. Like many, in this season I’ve greatly felt the absence of in-person church services, and look forward to the day when I can worship beside my friends and family again.

This scripture from the second chapter of the book of Acts provides us with a snapshot of what life in the early church looked like; a first-century illustration of the family of believers and the community in which they lived together. Undoubtedly the landscape of our world, and of the church looks wildly different from what it did then, but one common element remains the same: the communal habit of gathering together over a meal.

There’s a handful of aromas that will forever be held in association to the arrival of spring and the promise of summer in my mind: the pungent smell of blush-colored peonies that bloom in my aunt’s garden each year, the smell of fresh spread wood shavings at a livestock show, and the overwhelming fragrance of a million trees blooming around my hometown. These different fragrances are indicative of new life and beauty to me, and I can’t help but wonder if Paul thought the same when he penned the verse above in Corinthians.

Before the pandemic became commonplace in our lives, many of us found rest in the company of our friends, in conversations shared over restaurant tables, and in the chapels and sanctuaries that have now stood silent for weeks. While these specific outlets of peace and comfort are unavailable to us at the moment, we at EPAGA Home Care hold fast to the belief that we serve the God who created rest in the first place; the God from whom all peace and comfort flows from.