After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people,^[a] to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17: 1-3)

I have a secret wish to be epic.

You know what I mean. I want to make a huge splash on this world; something that stops people in their tracks. Which, honestly, kind of goes against the grain of my appearance and my demeanor, right? My head says, “Lynne, you should be important. People should listen when you speak. You have opinions and ideas that are ground-breaking and completely necessary and absolutely right.”

And maybe I do have valuable opinions and ideas. Maybe some of them are even true. But at the same time, my demeanor, my manner of speaking, and even my appearance are “fade into the woodwork” at best. I’m not the kind of person who naturally commands attention. I’m not magnetic. I’m not loud. I’m not easily categorized as “a leader” in the way our culture tends to mean it.

Much to my chagrin.

Sometimes I think it’s because I’m not good at playing the game; the subtle social art of positioning, branding, networking, maximizing. And much of what I focus on isn’t the sort of thing that wins you friends or influences people in the shiny, scalable, measurable sense. For example: I love rural ministry. I serve a small, family-style church that is thriving and exciting-well, for me, and (I think) for most of the people who come through our doors.

But our kind of thriving is not popular thriving.

We’re never going to be big. We’re never going to run the kind of programs that attract attention just by existing. We’re not going to draw hordes, or even dependable crowds. We’re not going to become a destination church. We’re not going to trend.

We’re little and we like it that way.

This week, I tried to explain us here at Bethel to a friend who dropped in for a visit. She has a very different outlook than I do. She has always valued creativity and the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit. She said she thought I looked happy at Bethel. I agreed. And then she asked the perpetual question, the one people ask when they sense something good but can’t help measuring it against visibility:

“Why don’t more people know about what’s happening here?”

I was momentarily thrown. I had no response ready. Finally, I said something about us “flying under the radar.”

And she responded, without missing a beat: “Well then, that’s a good thing. That’s what you’ve been called to. That’s what Bethel’s been called to.”

My first reaction wasn’t holy.

My first reaction was: Yes, but… could we be called to that and also be kind of noticed?

Because here’s the hunger underneath my polite face: I want to be significant in a way that gets confirmed out loud. Not just “my life matters to God,” but “my life matters in a way people can see.” I want the story to have a soundtrack. I want a moment where the camera pans in. I want proof that I’m not just one more person doing small things in a small place that most people drive past at a hundred kilometres an hour on their way somewhere else.

Which is an exhausting way to live, by the way; always scanning the horizon for evidence that your life is counting.

And then John 17 shows up, as it does. Jesus starts praying in that intimate, almost unguarded way he has—like he’s not performing, like he’s not trying to build a following, like he’s already secure in who he is.

“After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you… since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’” (John 17:1-3)

And there it is: eternal life.

That phrase so many of us have been trained to hear as “after you die.” As “where you go.” As “how long it lasts.” As “how to get in.”

But Jesus defines it differently.  So plainly it’s almost scandalous.

Eternal life is not defined as time.
Eternal life is defined as knowing.

Some preachers and teachers point out that “eternal” in John isn’t primarily about duration, but about quality; about identity, about belonging, about being rooted in God’s own life. Eternal life is not an endless extension of the life we already have. It’s a different kind of life altogether. A life that comes from being joined to Jesus.

Which means eternal life is not a distant reward.

It’s a present relationship.

And that messes with me. Because when eternal life is about identity—about knowing God in Jesus—then my frantic need to be epic starts to look like what it is: me trying to manufacture an identity that’s already being given.

I also think we need to stop blending words that don’t mean the same thing. I’m not trying to be pedantic. I’m trying to be faithful to what the text actually says.

We often treat these words as interchangeable:

• eternal life

• resurrection

• salvation

We mash them into one big Christian concept and then wonder why we’re confused, anxious, or vaguely disappointed.

But scripture doesn’t always treat them as the same thing.

Resurrection is God’s defiant “no” to death’s finality. It’s bodily. It’s cosmic. It’s creation renewed. It’s God refusing to abandon what God has made. It’s not just souls floating somewhere else. It’s the earth getting its future back.

Salvation is deliverance, rescue, healing, forgiveness, freedom, being brought home from all the places we get lost and bound and ashamed. Salvation has real-world implications. It’s not just a private spiritual transaction.

And eternal life, in John 17, is not defined as “going to heaven.” It’s defined as knowing God and knowing Jesus. Not knowing about. Not merely agreeing with the right set of statements. Knowing the way you know a person who has stepped into your story and changed what you can’t change by willpower alone.

When we conflate eternal life with resurrection, we reduce it to “what happens later.”
When we conflate eternal life with salvation, we sometimes reduce it to “what I got when I prayed the right prayer.”

But Jesus doesn’t pray it like that.

Jesus prays eternal life like it’s communion. Like it’s relationship. Like it’s belonging that starts now.

If eternal life is a ticket, then Christianity becomes spiritual paperwork. The main goal is to make sure you’ve got the stamp, the signature, the correct answers, the receipt—and then you can get back to real life.

But if eternal life is knowing Jesus, then it’s not a trophy you win. It’s a life you live inside of. A life that is already underway, even if you are not very good at it. Even if you are still you—still defensive, still tired, still occasionally petty, still hungry for affirmation.

Knowing Jesus doesn’t make you shiny. 

It doesn’t remove grief. 

It doesn’t remove death.

And “knowing Jesus” isn’t an abstract religious thing. It is incredibly concrete. It shows up in the ordinary.

Which is, frankly, rural ministry in a nutshell.

If you want a stage, rural ministry will cure you. Or at least it will frustrate you into honesty.

Because rural life has its own kind of invisibility. Not in a resentful way. Just in a factual way. The world doesn’t revolve around our little crossroads churches, our gravel roads, our farm gates, our one-store towns, our post offices that close early, our community halls that smell like coffee and sandwiches and history.

In a rural church, you don’t get to hide behind big systems. You can’t outsource care to a program. You can’t depend on momentum. Most weeks, you can’t even depend on the weather.

You learn quickly that “thriving” doesn’t look like a crowd. Thriving looks like:

The same thirty people showing up again, even when they’re tired.
Someone noticing who isn’t there and phoning them—not to scold, but to check in.
A casserole arriving quietly at the right doorstep, no announcement needed.
A prayer offered without performance, because we all know the names involved.
A church that holds memory; who died, who moved away, who got sick, who reconciled, who didn’t.
A sanctuary where the people in the pews have actually helped each other out of ditches (literal ones, sometimes).

And in that setting, “eternal life” starts to sound less like a marketing slogan and more like a description of the only thing that keeps us human: being known, and knowing in return.

Because rural communities can do “known” really well and also really badly.

Being known can be a gift: people notice you, people remember your kids, people show up.

Being known can also feel suffocating: everybody knows your business, your failures have a long shelf life, old stories get repeated like they’re scripture.

So when Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God and knowing him, it isn’t sentimental. It isn’t just “aww, community.” It is deeper than that.

It is identity anchored in God rather than in reputation.

And that matters a lot in places where reputation can become a kind of currency.

So when my friend said, “That’s what you’ve been called to,” I wanted to argue. Because “flying under the radar” sounds like the opposite of epic. It sounds like obscurity. Like being overlooked. Like being the kind of church that never gets featured, never goes viral, never has the impressive thing to point at.

But then I think about Jesus praying in John 17.

He’s not praying for spectacle. He’s praying for faithfulness. For love. For unity. For those entrusted to him. He’s praying like what matters most is not visibility, but relationship: being held in God, being kept, being known.

And it starts to reframe things.

Maybe being under the radar isn’t failure.
Maybe it’s protection.
Maybe it’s the kind of space where knowing Jesus can actually happen—without all the spiritual noise.

Because when you’re not trying to impress anyone, you can sometimes tell the truth.

And rural ministry is full of truth-telling moments that don’t look dramatic but absolutely are.

The widow who admits she’s angry at God, and nobody rushes to fix her.
The farmer who hasn’t cried in public for thirty years and then does, because a hymn opens something up.
The couple estranged from family for years who show up together at Christmas Eve, because maybe it’s time.

None of that is flashy.

But it is life.

And if eternal life is knowing God in Jesus, here, now, then maybe eternal life looks exactly like that: small, stubborn, ordinary, grace-soaked.

If I’m honest, my desire to be epic is usually a desire to be secure.

To feel like my life is not disappearing.

To feel like I am someone.

And Jesus answers that desire, but not by making me more impressive.

Jesus answers it by giving me himself.

He doesn’t hand me a ticket. He offers me a tether.

He doesn’t promise I’ll be remembered by the world. He promises I’m known by God.

And that is an identity no algorithm can grant and no obscurity can erase.

So maybe the question isn’t, “Why don’t more people know what’s happening here?”

Maybe the question is, “Do we know Jesus here?”

Do we know him in the way we care for each other when no one is watching?
Do we know him in the way we handle conflict in a small community where you can’t just disappear into the crowd?
Do we know him in the way we bury our dead, and feed the living, and keep showing up?

Do we know him in the long faithfulness, week after week, season after season, when there is no applause?

Because if we do, then eternal life is already among us.

Not as a someday prize.

As a here-and-now reality.

And maybe that’s what Bethel has been called to: not to be big, but to be real. Not to be famous, but to be faithful. Not to chase “epic,” but to be a place where people are known—where they can come as they are and be held in the Life that does not end.

Depending on the day, a part of me still wants to protest.

But another part of me, quieter, steadier, recognizes it as mercy.

Because being seen by everyone is not the same as being known.

And eternal life, according to Jesus, is this:

To know the only true God.

And Jesus Christ whom God has sent.

Right here.

Right now.

Even under the radar.

Blessings today, my dear Bethel Friends, and Remember you are Loved.