My youngest brother is building a house in South Carolina for his family and our father to live in. Under normal conditions, they would already be living in it; but after COVID the price of lumber quadrupled. The cost of construction labor went up too, if you could find the workers you needed. The U.S. currently needs 300,000 additional construction workers, and the need is rapidly increas-ing.

The shortage has wide-ranging effects, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. We need doctors, nurses, oth-er hospital and nursing home staff, retail workers, and truckers.

Many businesses have cut back hours and services. Shipping delays, material shortages, and cost increases are common. In the U.S., there are more job openings than there are people looking for work (Fortune). Unemployment claims are the lowest since 1969 (Labor Department).

The RPCNA has a need for pastors. We need ruling elders. We need missionaries (see p. 16).

If we view these shortages like tokens on a world map in the board game Risk, there are limited human resources and limited options. A Reformed Presbyterian who answers the call to meet one need will leave a ministry spot open and create a new need. It seems like a vicious cycle with little hope.

The economy and the North American labor force are far more complex than a board game. And when one contemplates the almighty God who presides in the actions and affairs of humans, there is a high level of complexity to how things work out. But they do work out.

I’ve been on a church session for 28 years. Whenever a problem has become so glaring that we as a session commit to fervent prayer and ask the congregation to join us, answers to problems that had evaded us for a long time burst forth. While the need was visible but less urgent, we didn’t pray much. But when our minds saw the priority as God directed us, He also provided the answer we sought. Often He also enlightens our perspective.

Let us pray, then, as the Reformed Presbyterian Church, for pastors to fill the pulpits and seminary students whom God is in the process of calling. Let us pray for more elders to shepherd our churches and more deacons to minister to our own people and to a hurting community. Let us pray for missionaries for every place where a need is acute. And let us pray for even more pastors, el-ders, deacons, and missionaries than we currently need, so that one day we can reach more people with the good news of the gospel and train more workers for God’s kingdom.

Let us pray for health care workers from among us so that the gospel can go forth in word and deed during a pandemic. Let us pray for godly construction workers, truckers, retail workers, and others who approach needs not with fear but with the assurance that God is working through them, putting them in just the right place at the right time.