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Acts 10 is one of my favourite stories. I do say that a lot about Bible stories, but this one gets exciting as Peter shares the Gospel with the Roman centurion who was actively seeking God. I got to share the story with my youth group on Friday at our annual Christmas party. I opted to go with Acts stories in our weeks leading up to Christmas to make sure we purposefully connected how the baby Jesus who came at Christmas is the same one who set the world on fire and changed it for the better.

I love loads of details in the story about Cornelius in Acts 10, but what has struck me in the past week is how Cornelius was actively seeking God and looking to honour him when God sent an angel to tell him Peter could teach him more about how to follow God better. God provided a way to know him better, and it was through another person. I love that God has put us in relationship with other people who can grow alongside us.

This week had some beautiful moments for me to grow alongside some others here, and I’m grateful for the chance to be in relationship with people actively seeking Jesus. It also had some wild moments where I felt stressed and fell short of what I hoped to do. My Friday morning was wild as I woke up to check Givorgy’s flight and saw it was an hour late and chose to sleep another hour. Then I checked later only to discover he’d already landed right on time which meant I wasn’t able to bus to the airport to meet him on time. It all worked out, and we got to hang out for a bit before I headed to church to prepare for our Christmas dinner.

I’m still learning things, and this event has a lot of traditions that I’m not super practiced putting in place. I was a little nervous when my leaders were all late arriving to help set up, but that also worked out just fine. I had no real need to be worried, but the planner in me likes to be over-prepared. Turns out I was just enough prepared, and the things that weren’t over an above were actually okay. I don’t have it all together, but I have some people in my life who are a few steps ahead who can answer questions for me or learn alongside me when I want to know Jesus better. That was my great comfort in reading Cornelius’s story this week (among other things) because he was fully wrapped into God’s family when he was doing his best, and God made a way for him to learn more and grow closer to him.