A Love Letter: Let our Hopes, Not our Hurts, Shape our Future
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”
—Robert H. Schuller
In the Northern Highlands Benefice—across the winding lakes and wooded trails of Hayward, Rice Lake, Spooner, and Springbrook—we know what it is to carry stories. Some are filled with joy: having children sounds again at Grace, the warmth of Easter Vigil together, the laughter at Father Dave’s 50th anniversary. Others carry wounds: unexpected loss, changes that came too fast, or not fast enough.
But what if our future isn’t determined by those wounds?
As people of the Resurrection, we are called to live from a place of holy hope. That’s not pretending we haven’t known pain. It’s trusting that even our hurts are being held and healed by God—and that the Spirit still breathes possibility into our churches.
In Romans 5, Paul writes:
“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
That’s the kind of hope we’re holding onto in the Northern Highlands Benefice. That is the kind of hope I am holding onto as a member of it:
Hope that God is not done with rural ministry.
Hope that small churches can do big things when they work together.
Hope that new families, new leaders, new rhythms of worship will take root in familiar soil.
Hope that we are not alone in this work, because the Spirit is already ahead of us, preparing the way.
The future of this benefice will not be shaped by what we’ve lost—it will be shaped by what we dare to build together. Jesus’ own ministry reminds us that wounds are real, but not final. When he met his disciples in their fear, he showed them his scars—but he also showed them the way forward: “Peace be with you.”
We share that peace every Sunday at all four of our locations.
We share that hope every Sunday.
We carry our stories with honesty, but we do not live in the past.
As we gather for shared worship, dream new ministries, and care for one another across distance and difference, we are choosing to be shaped by hope. By God's promise. By the resurrection life still unfolding in our midst.
“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal…” (Philippians 3:13–14)
Let our hopes shape this benefice. Let our hopes guide our prayers, our planning, and our presence in the community.
Let our hopes—not our hurts—shape the future of the what Church looks like in our rural Northwood areas. What love looks like.
It is a privilege and a blessing to get to share the peace each and every Sunday with you. To get to love you.
-Bexs Nelson
