Strength in weakness, Hope for the Church in post-modern America?

Lately has been a series of difficulties and pains here at our fine farm. First, has been the resurgence of dibilitating pain from the several torn and slipped disks in my lower back, and now I fear a slight touch of the "bug" keeping us sufficiently miserable. Still, even in the midst of trial, there is no darkness. Rather, there is much thankfulness and joy, and renewed hope.

First, due to the kindness of a brother and his family in Christ, we have been able to procure the rest of our seed order for the upcoming season! While we were pleased and thankful to the Lord for the small amount we had already purchased, this unexpected blessing has over-joyed us and allowed us some considerable peace. We have also used the kindness of this unnamed brother to purchase a canner to make our harvest last longer. Our new canner should arrive today! I will give an update soon on the many varieties that we are hoping to produce. Hopefully, it will include some decent pictures as we learn how to post them. There were many other real needs met by the Lord's grace through this charitable brother. We will not seek to publicly praise this brother much, but shall pray that God will bless him by making true that promise that, "the things done in private, shall be openly shown," in that day.
We have also purchased a copy of Suzanne Ashworth's book, "Seed to Seed", at the reccommendation of brother Scott Terry

Another reason for our joy, even in the midst of trial, is the following posting by our dear friend in Rayville, MO:
It is a much needed and very helpful discussion of how we, as christians, can both glorify our Lord and impact future generations. While we have some differences on eschatology, (end-time events), myself being somewhat of an undecided amillenialist/historicist, we are not divided by these fancy terms. Rather, we are united in our understanding of the great Covenant of Grace which has been bestowed on us through the Word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ our Lord. We share a common vision of hope! The hope that one day the Church will again take seriously the call to purify herself in all realms as she seeks to live out her calling as salt and light to this generation. It is a beautiful and real hope, that we as christians will take seriously our duty to stewardship. First, of our own lives, families, estates, and then, of our individual local churches and the relationships to each member thereof, according to our place and station, and finally, to the local community around us as we seek to implement this understanding of just what it means to be an agrarian-minded christian. The idea being, that we could eventually unite and/or replicate ourselves throughout individual communities to develop the vision that we all hold dear, a localized, christian community based upon an agrarian understanding of biblical and economic thinking.

I realize that this is a tall order that many would see as a doomed endeavor. There are many who earnestly believe that the days are waxing worse (myself included), and that tyranny, globalism, increased debauchery, and universal persecution are well on their way to us now. The prevalent thinking is that if things are going from bad to worse, then the studious and intelligent thing for the believer to do would be to get out and go into hiding, or at least to prepare as far as humanly possible to move ourselves to a more defensible position. This is wise and good, and in keeping with my personal eschatological view, however, there must also be consideration given to our earnest brothers and sisters who see a more hopeful view of things, along with our call as they understand it, to go forward in the earth proclaiming the Kingdom in hope. To my thinking, and according to my friend's post, these views are not so diameterically opposed that we must separate from one another and begin to hurl verbal "stones" at one another, as some seem to do. We will choose to work together in the unity of Christ, and our fidelity to the Word of God as defined by our common confession, as we move forward in our efforts to build real covenant keeping, Reformed communities to sustain our families....whatever the future may hold.