As a young pastor who came to Trinity fresh out of seminary, I fell into a role that many young pastors who are called to serve program size parishes do, ministering to youth and young adults.
In my first two years here, my priority went to the youth as it seemed that they were the most in need of organization and of being fully re-integrated into the life of the congregation. In that time, a few really strong leaders have emerged and while there have been struggles, there has been amazing ministry done by these youth and a lot of re-integration has happened. And so, after updating the Sunday School roster for this year, I realized that there is a critical mass of young families in this congregation (by the end of this year there are going to be 28 children age 2 and under!!!) and so I am implementing a plan to use those strong leaders from the youth to take on more of a leadership role for me to oversee while I shift more of my direct efforts to young adults and young families. This way, I will be able to give more equal attention to both youth and ya/yf while raising up leaders from both of those groups.
Then about 10 days ago, someone told me how happy there are they I am shifting my ministry focus to the ya/yf population of the church. "Youth aren't really the future of the church, you know...it's the young adults who are returning with their young children." I responded to the person that I disagreed because both groups represent the future of the church, but in different times and ways. I didn't have the time to give rationale, but I've been digesting this interaction for the past few days and wanted to share some thoughts.
I do firmly believe that youth are the future of the church...I have believed this for a long time.
I also believe firmly that young adults are the future of the church and have believed this for a long time.
Youth are most certainly the future of the church, they are the ones providing leadership in places that we don't often see. Very few adults have the blessing of being able to see youth at work on mission trips, at synod assembly, in youth group and confirmation. They are willing to take on tough issues, face down adversity and frustrations and persevere through disappointments. The youth of this current generation, for the most part, love better than we adults love and they are more accepting that most adults are. They see through the bull&*^& that we produce when we say that folks should behave one way and then we ourselves act another way. But they are also under attack...from bullies, from a sex saturated culture, from colleges that tell them that they need a certain number of extracurricular activities to be able to think about applying to that college, from their own doubts and questions, and sometimes from their churches. And so to make sure that the youth remain the future of the church and become those young adults who bring their children to church is to engage them, invite their questions and doubts and tell them they are allowed to struggle. Give them a place to rest and re-create both physically and spiritually. Help them to see that God loves them no matter what and put scripture in their hands and a language of faith into their hearts so that they can profess what they believe when people challenge them...and so that they can profess what they don't believe or what they are struggling to believe in. And most of all, drop the fake crap, stop pretending we're cool when we're not and just love these youth for who they are, for who God made them to be.
Young adults are also the future of the church. They are the ones that are getting married and having children, thus, increasing the membership numbers of a congregation. There are strong leadership roles that these folks play too, Sunday school teachers, ministry team members (I don't like the word committee, sounds boring), event planners, bible study leaders. But this group is also faced with its challenges...wedding planning, working overtime, finding work, going to school, sick kids, kids who don't sleep through the night, kids school and sporting functions living in a different city or state than family, finances, etc. Like the youth of our congregation, the young adult/young family set is also over booked. I remember when I was in high school, my mom had a dry erase calendar by the door and it was constantly packed with events that the three of us kids had between Sarah's softball, Chris' rowing and my band and choir stuff. And they are struggling with the same questions youth face, but they look at it with a different lens than youth do as they are at a different place in their lives.
We need to find how to engage these young adults and young parents...how do we as a church provide them with a safe space to discuss the parts of scripture they question? How do we as a church provide them a place to discuss the struggles that young people face with finding jobs and managing finances? How do we as church help provide sabbath to young parents so that they can have time for themselves and/or for their significant others/spouses? How do we engage them when they are tired from not having slept the night before because of crying children or working on their dissertation or any number of other things that keep young adults burning the candle at both ends?
Youth and young adults/young families are all the future of the church...
Strike that...they ARE the church! They are the church now and here.
Are you ready to embrace that change, church? it's happening right now
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
A Canaanite Woman and a Gran Torino - Pentecost 9A
Pentecost 9
August 14, 2011
Matthew 15:21-28
If there was ever a 100% human portrayal of Jesus within the Gospels, there are three main examples which pop into my head, Jesus cleansing the temple, Jesus in the garden, and Jesus in his interaction with the Canaanite woman that we heard this morning. Now many attempts have been made to try and clean up this interaction between Jesus and this woman. It’s almost as if we would prefer that Jesus was not 100% human sometimes, especially where a text like this is concerned, and so we try and create a kinder, gentler Jesus than the one that Matthew portrays in this text. So maybe Jesus was just testing the faith of this woman, maybe he wanted her to act more like a proper woman and not address him in such a bold manner…a manner which was stereotypical of prostitutes of that time. But what if Jesus interacts with the Canaanite woman in this way because he’s just telling it like he sees it at that moment?
When I was reading the text this week, the plot of the movie Gran Torino popped into my head. It’s about a man named Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet from Detroit. He was a widower who neither trusted in the young priest who frequently called on him after his wife died, nor his neighbors, a Hmong family who had recently moved in next door. Walt really wished they would just go away, along with the rest of the people who had caused such a change in the racial diversity of his neighborhood. But things took a twist for Walt when the youngest of his neighbors got caught trying to steal Walt’s car. All Walt asked for as punishment for the crime was that the boy do some chores for him as Walt decided to reform the boy and do what he could to keep the boy out of his cousin’s gang…and as their relationship developed, Walt became more and more involved with the Hmong family that he originally despised. The neighbors became family and in the end, Walt made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the lives of his neighbors from the gang that threatened their safety.
Within this movie, Clint Eastwood captured very accurately the continued racial tensions that exist within the city of Detroit and its suburbs. But what I like about it is that it demonstrates what can happen when we look beyond ourselves and dare to see our neighbors beyond the stereotypes that seem, all to often, to define us. It is a portrayal of a broadening worldview…one that also takes place in our gospel text this morning.
At this point in the journey, Jesus and his disciples were in the district of Tyre and Sidon, a land formerly known as Canaan. The folks who lived there were considered to be the enemies of the Jews since the time of Noah. The Canaanites, later called Syrophonecians, were descendants of Noah’s son Ham, the son that Noah cursed for having seen Noah naked. They were also pagans who worshiped Phonecian gods and had been slaves to the Jews for sometime, as was promised to Abraham by God. So the fact that Matthew refers to the woman as a Canaanite rather than a Syrophonecian seems to play off the adversarial nature of the relationship between these two groups of people. So, if it is surprising to Jesus, or to the disciples, that a Canaanite woman would approach Jesus and ask for his help while he was in the land formerly known as Canaan, it should really only be because the Canaanites did not take too kindly to the Jews.
It is obvious, though, that this woman knew exactly who Jesus was and knew of the miracles that he had performed. And it would seem, given the relationship between the Jews and the Canaanites that her willingness to cross the divide signifies the desperate nature of her daughter’s situation and the depth of concern that this woman has for her daughter.
The reaction of the disciples and of Jesus to this woman, however, is quite shocking when you think about it. Instead of being warm and welcoming, the disciples wish to cast her off back where she came from and Jesus first ignores her…twice, then he refers to her and her people as dogs, which were at that time seen as unclean in that cultural framework. And this is the part of the story that we wish to clean up a lot of the time. We like the part where Jesus praises the woman’s faith…though she never actually confesses anything…and we like the part where the woman’s daughter is instantaneously healed. But it’s the initial reaction of Jesus to this woman that makes this story difficult to read and to interpret…and so we try and interpret it by seeing Jesus in the kindest light possible and sometimes this leads us to portray the woman as the bad guy.
But we miss the point when we try and clean this story up a bit to locate the kinder, friendlier Jesus in this interaction…Matthew didn’t sweep things under the rug and neither should we.
When we try and clean this story up and look for the nice Jesus in this story, we miss out on the human aspect of Jesus that Matthew was trying to show here…as well as the divine aspect that is also on stage…with Jesus, they are one and the same. In Old Testament times, we see a God who was known to change his mind from time to time. And what we see when we look at this story is a fully human and fully divine Jesus who also changes his mind…a very human Jesus whose figurative sight is broadened to a greater vision of what God’s kingdom really is…who God’s kingdom encompasses. In this interaction we see a man on a mission from God to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel who realizes that maybe more than just the house of Israel needs to be saved…maybe they…maybe we…all need saving.
Two weeks ago, we heard the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children and there were 12 baskets of food left over…one for each of the tribes of Israel…and at the end of this chapter of Matthew we hear of the feeding of 4,000 with there being 7 baskets of food left over…7 being the number of completion in the Hebrew tradition. And in between these two stories is the tale of a woman from a group of outsiders…a woman from a group of people that were considered the enemy, having the boldness to remind Jesus of the leftovers …how there is still enough to go around even after all the children have been fed. And it is because of her testimony that we see a shift in Jesus’ mission…a shift from a mission to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel to a mission to save all of the lost sheep.
When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t just die for the sheep of the house of Israel, he died for all of us. His worldview broadened to see the grand scope of the inclusive nature of the kingdom of God…his arm open not just to some, but to all.
Jesus may not have been a grumpy old man like Walt Kowalski in the movie Gran Torino and certainly Walt Kowalski is no Jesus, but in the end, both Jesus and Walt were willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good…Walt for the family that he had become closer to than his own family and Jesus, not just for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but also for the Canaanite woman and her daughter and for you and for me and for all of humanity.
Amen
August 14, 2011
Matthew 15:21-28
If there was ever a 100% human portrayal of Jesus within the Gospels, there are three main examples which pop into my head, Jesus cleansing the temple, Jesus in the garden, and Jesus in his interaction with the Canaanite woman that we heard this morning. Now many attempts have been made to try and clean up this interaction between Jesus and this woman. It’s almost as if we would prefer that Jesus was not 100% human sometimes, especially where a text like this is concerned, and so we try and create a kinder, gentler Jesus than the one that Matthew portrays in this text. So maybe Jesus was just testing the faith of this woman, maybe he wanted her to act more like a proper woman and not address him in such a bold manner…a manner which was stereotypical of prostitutes of that time. But what if Jesus interacts with the Canaanite woman in this way because he’s just telling it like he sees it at that moment?
When I was reading the text this week, the plot of the movie Gran Torino popped into my head. It’s about a man named Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet from Detroit. He was a widower who neither trusted in the young priest who frequently called on him after his wife died, nor his neighbors, a Hmong family who had recently moved in next door. Walt really wished they would just go away, along with the rest of the people who had caused such a change in the racial diversity of his neighborhood. But things took a twist for Walt when the youngest of his neighbors got caught trying to steal Walt’s car. All Walt asked for as punishment for the crime was that the boy do some chores for him as Walt decided to reform the boy and do what he could to keep the boy out of his cousin’s gang…and as their relationship developed, Walt became more and more involved with the Hmong family that he originally despised. The neighbors became family and in the end, Walt made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the lives of his neighbors from the gang that threatened their safety.
Within this movie, Clint Eastwood captured very accurately the continued racial tensions that exist within the city of Detroit and its suburbs. But what I like about it is that it demonstrates what can happen when we look beyond ourselves and dare to see our neighbors beyond the stereotypes that seem, all to often, to define us. It is a portrayal of a broadening worldview…one that also takes place in our gospel text this morning.
At this point in the journey, Jesus and his disciples were in the district of Tyre and Sidon, a land formerly known as Canaan. The folks who lived there were considered to be the enemies of the Jews since the time of Noah. The Canaanites, later called Syrophonecians, were descendants of Noah’s son Ham, the son that Noah cursed for having seen Noah naked. They were also pagans who worshiped Phonecian gods and had been slaves to the Jews for sometime, as was promised to Abraham by God. So the fact that Matthew refers to the woman as a Canaanite rather than a Syrophonecian seems to play off the adversarial nature of the relationship between these two groups of people. So, if it is surprising to Jesus, or to the disciples, that a Canaanite woman would approach Jesus and ask for his help while he was in the land formerly known as Canaan, it should really only be because the Canaanites did not take too kindly to the Jews.
It is obvious, though, that this woman knew exactly who Jesus was and knew of the miracles that he had performed. And it would seem, given the relationship between the Jews and the Canaanites that her willingness to cross the divide signifies the desperate nature of her daughter’s situation and the depth of concern that this woman has for her daughter.
The reaction of the disciples and of Jesus to this woman, however, is quite shocking when you think about it. Instead of being warm and welcoming, the disciples wish to cast her off back where she came from and Jesus first ignores her…twice, then he refers to her and her people as dogs, which were at that time seen as unclean in that cultural framework. And this is the part of the story that we wish to clean up a lot of the time. We like the part where Jesus praises the woman’s faith…though she never actually confesses anything…and we like the part where the woman’s daughter is instantaneously healed. But it’s the initial reaction of Jesus to this woman that makes this story difficult to read and to interpret…and so we try and interpret it by seeing Jesus in the kindest light possible and sometimes this leads us to portray the woman as the bad guy.
But we miss the point when we try and clean this story up a bit to locate the kinder, friendlier Jesus in this interaction…Matthew didn’t sweep things under the rug and neither should we.
When we try and clean this story up and look for the nice Jesus in this story, we miss out on the human aspect of Jesus that Matthew was trying to show here…as well as the divine aspect that is also on stage…with Jesus, they are one and the same. In Old Testament times, we see a God who was known to change his mind from time to time. And what we see when we look at this story is a fully human and fully divine Jesus who also changes his mind…a very human Jesus whose figurative sight is broadened to a greater vision of what God’s kingdom really is…who God’s kingdom encompasses. In this interaction we see a man on a mission from God to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel who realizes that maybe more than just the house of Israel needs to be saved…maybe they…maybe we…all need saving.
Two weeks ago, we heard the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children and there were 12 baskets of food left over…one for each of the tribes of Israel…and at the end of this chapter of Matthew we hear of the feeding of 4,000 with there being 7 baskets of food left over…7 being the number of completion in the Hebrew tradition. And in between these two stories is the tale of a woman from a group of outsiders…a woman from a group of people that were considered the enemy, having the boldness to remind Jesus of the leftovers …how there is still enough to go around even after all the children have been fed. And it is because of her testimony that we see a shift in Jesus’ mission…a shift from a mission to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel to a mission to save all of the lost sheep.
When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t just die for the sheep of the house of Israel, he died for all of us. His worldview broadened to see the grand scope of the inclusive nature of the kingdom of God…his arm open not just to some, but to all.
Jesus may not have been a grumpy old man like Walt Kowalski in the movie Gran Torino and certainly Walt Kowalski is no Jesus, but in the end, both Jesus and Walt were willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good…Walt for the family that he had become closer to than his own family and Jesus, not just for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but also for the Canaanite woman and her daughter and for you and for me and for all of humanity.
Amen
Sunday, August 7, 2011
It's Not About Us - Pentecost 8A
Pentecost 8
August 7, 2011
Matthew 14:22-33
This summer at confirmation camp I got the chance to traverse the high ropes course at Camp Tomah Shinga. I made it through the course last year with not much of a problem and this year, after the initial climb up the pole to the course, it seemed like I was going to make it through about the same as last year, if not faster. The belay team had my rope tight, the course was steady, and I raced across the first beam like an experienced acrobat…but then we got to the wire I had to cross…which was not that big of a deal…until the wind picked up. Ah yes, I said to myself, that was a factor I had not thought about since last year there was not much wind. I had seen a couple of the youth become almost paralyzed by these brisk breezes that came through that afternoon, but you never know until you experience it for yourself just how much a strong wind can make you question your trust in a rope and the group of folks that are keeping that rope tight.
So when I was reading this text this week, the first thing to pop into my head was this experience and I thought “oh sure, I know how Peter felt when he was walking on water and the wind picked up.” After all, I had experienced something similar. Peter and I had both been walking somewhere that humans don’t normally walk, trusting in something to keep us going until the breeze picked up and then we started to question what in the world we were doing in our respective positions. Though, when I thought twice about my trust in that rope, I didn’t have that problem of sinking as steel wires and water are two very different things.
And that’s when I realized that maybe it’s not about me and it’s not about Peter in this account from Matthew. Maybe it’s about something more.
It can be so easy for us to make it about Peter, to look at this story and say, look how much faith he had in Jesus that he actually got out of the boat trusting that Jesus would give him the ability to walk on water…but when the wind picked up, he took his eyes off of his savior and that is where he got into trouble…that is when he started to sink. So this is our lesson, to be more like Peter when it comes to getting out of the boat…but at the same time be less like Peter when we’re walking towards Jesus on the water. This is a comforting reading for us who live in an individualistic society, we can put ourselves in Peter’s shoes comforted by the fact that even Jesus’ closest companions messed up a time or two or over and over again. They gave it their all but often times they struck out. And you know, this is not a wrong reading of this text, there are multiple ways of going about it.
But where this can get dangerous is that we might start telling ourselves, oh, if I just had more faith and kept my eyes on Jesus, I wouldn’t be in this financial mess…I wouldn’t have been laid off…if I hadn’t taken my eyes off of Jesus, our marriage wouldn’t have fallen apart…if I had just had more faith, Jimmy would have beaten the cancer…if I had just had more faith…the list goes on and on of ways we could beat ourselves up thinking that we should have had more faith…if we had just kept our eyes on Jesus.
But this is why I think that it may be that Matthew’s account of this story isn’t about Peter and it isn’t about us…it’s about Jesus. You see, we could go on and on about the faith it must have taken Peter to get out of the boat after Jesus tells him to. We could admonish one another to have the courage and faith that it took Peter to get out of the boat. But if you look at the words Peter uses when he addresses Jesus, they are the same as the words that the company of Satan, the high priest and the mockers at the cross use to test Jesus. If it is you…command these stones to turn to bread…confess to us that you are the Messiah, the son of the living God…come down off of that cross and save yourself…command me to come to you on the water.
Poor Peter wants so badly to get it right, but in the process things go horribly wrong and he ends up on the bad end of a good deal. And we do the same thing sometimes…if it is you, Jesus, heal my friend…get my spouse a job…find me my soul mate…reveal the winning lottery numbers to me so I can get out of debt…then I will truly know that it is you and will truly be able to trust you.
The older I get and the more opportunity I have to read about the disciples, the happier I am that Jesus chose who he chose. This was not a first string starting line up…maybe third string or bench warmers…but that’s good because most of us don’t do any better than they did…we try and we try and we put all the effort in that we can but none of us fit that perfect model of discipleship. We mess up, we take our eyes off of Jesus when the winds pick up and we get scared, our trust wanes when storms brew and knock us around like a little life raft in the ocean during a hurricane. We are sinful beings, it is impossible, no matter how hard we try, to keep our eyes on Jesus all the time, it is impossible for us to have the mountain of faith that we so desperately want to have. You know what, though, in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter. We don’t have to be perfect and have an impressive amount of unwavering faith…because it’s not about us…it’s about Jesus.
It’s about the one who came from God to save us from ourselves. It’s about the one who sends us out and then accompanies us on the journey. It’s about the one who comes to us in the middle of the sea ready to reach down his hand and pull us up when we begin to sink and pull us back into the boat. Jesus doesn’t care about the level of faith we have because he knows that we have it through the gift of the Holy Spirit…Jesus himself said that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can do great things. Little faith is enough faith for Jesus because it is still faith and because Jesus is the one who had faith enough for us all, who put so much trust in his Father and our Father, that he went to the cross and gave up his life for those of us who struggle along side of Peter and the other 11 disciples. We want to get it right but sometimes we fail and sometimes storms emerge, some that we see and some that are completely unexpected. And when things go awry and when those storms rise up, Jesus is the one who comes to us in them and reaches out his hand to bring us to safety…we might not always recognize it at the time, but regardless that hand is always there ready when we need him.
The most freeing part of a ropes course is the zip line. That’s the part where you put 100% trust in the rope and the line and give up control of what is going to happen in the minute or two that follows. The same freeing experience can be had when we stop worrying about whether we’re good enough and trust 100% that Jesus loves us enough that, even though we might not always recognize it, even though we stand and struggle next to Peter and the other disciples, Jesus will always be there to reach down his hand and pull us up out of the water and back to safety. It’s the letting go that’s up to us.
August 7, 2011
Matthew 14:22-33
This summer at confirmation camp I got the chance to traverse the high ropes course at Camp Tomah Shinga. I made it through the course last year with not much of a problem and this year, after the initial climb up the pole to the course, it seemed like I was going to make it through about the same as last year, if not faster. The belay team had my rope tight, the course was steady, and I raced across the first beam like an experienced acrobat…but then we got to the wire I had to cross…which was not that big of a deal…until the wind picked up. Ah yes, I said to myself, that was a factor I had not thought about since last year there was not much wind. I had seen a couple of the youth become almost paralyzed by these brisk breezes that came through that afternoon, but you never know until you experience it for yourself just how much a strong wind can make you question your trust in a rope and the group of folks that are keeping that rope tight.
So when I was reading this text this week, the first thing to pop into my head was this experience and I thought “oh sure, I know how Peter felt when he was walking on water and the wind picked up.” After all, I had experienced something similar. Peter and I had both been walking somewhere that humans don’t normally walk, trusting in something to keep us going until the breeze picked up and then we started to question what in the world we were doing in our respective positions. Though, when I thought twice about my trust in that rope, I didn’t have that problem of sinking as steel wires and water are two very different things.
And that’s when I realized that maybe it’s not about me and it’s not about Peter in this account from Matthew. Maybe it’s about something more.
It can be so easy for us to make it about Peter, to look at this story and say, look how much faith he had in Jesus that he actually got out of the boat trusting that Jesus would give him the ability to walk on water…but when the wind picked up, he took his eyes off of his savior and that is where he got into trouble…that is when he started to sink. So this is our lesson, to be more like Peter when it comes to getting out of the boat…but at the same time be less like Peter when we’re walking towards Jesus on the water. This is a comforting reading for us who live in an individualistic society, we can put ourselves in Peter’s shoes comforted by the fact that even Jesus’ closest companions messed up a time or two or over and over again. They gave it their all but often times they struck out. And you know, this is not a wrong reading of this text, there are multiple ways of going about it.
But where this can get dangerous is that we might start telling ourselves, oh, if I just had more faith and kept my eyes on Jesus, I wouldn’t be in this financial mess…I wouldn’t have been laid off…if I hadn’t taken my eyes off of Jesus, our marriage wouldn’t have fallen apart…if I had just had more faith, Jimmy would have beaten the cancer…if I had just had more faith…the list goes on and on of ways we could beat ourselves up thinking that we should have had more faith…if we had just kept our eyes on Jesus.
But this is why I think that it may be that Matthew’s account of this story isn’t about Peter and it isn’t about us…it’s about Jesus. You see, we could go on and on about the faith it must have taken Peter to get out of the boat after Jesus tells him to. We could admonish one another to have the courage and faith that it took Peter to get out of the boat. But if you look at the words Peter uses when he addresses Jesus, they are the same as the words that the company of Satan, the high priest and the mockers at the cross use to test Jesus. If it is you…command these stones to turn to bread…confess to us that you are the Messiah, the son of the living God…come down off of that cross and save yourself…command me to come to you on the water.
Poor Peter wants so badly to get it right, but in the process things go horribly wrong and he ends up on the bad end of a good deal. And we do the same thing sometimes…if it is you, Jesus, heal my friend…get my spouse a job…find me my soul mate…reveal the winning lottery numbers to me so I can get out of debt…then I will truly know that it is you and will truly be able to trust you.
The older I get and the more opportunity I have to read about the disciples, the happier I am that Jesus chose who he chose. This was not a first string starting line up…maybe third string or bench warmers…but that’s good because most of us don’t do any better than they did…we try and we try and we put all the effort in that we can but none of us fit that perfect model of discipleship. We mess up, we take our eyes off of Jesus when the winds pick up and we get scared, our trust wanes when storms brew and knock us around like a little life raft in the ocean during a hurricane. We are sinful beings, it is impossible, no matter how hard we try, to keep our eyes on Jesus all the time, it is impossible for us to have the mountain of faith that we so desperately want to have. You know what, though, in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter. We don’t have to be perfect and have an impressive amount of unwavering faith…because it’s not about us…it’s about Jesus.
It’s about the one who came from God to save us from ourselves. It’s about the one who sends us out and then accompanies us on the journey. It’s about the one who comes to us in the middle of the sea ready to reach down his hand and pull us up when we begin to sink and pull us back into the boat. Jesus doesn’t care about the level of faith we have because he knows that we have it through the gift of the Holy Spirit…Jesus himself said that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can do great things. Little faith is enough faith for Jesus because it is still faith and because Jesus is the one who had faith enough for us all, who put so much trust in his Father and our Father, that he went to the cross and gave up his life for those of us who struggle along side of Peter and the other 11 disciples. We want to get it right but sometimes we fail and sometimes storms emerge, some that we see and some that are completely unexpected. And when things go awry and when those storms rise up, Jesus is the one who comes to us in them and reaches out his hand to bring us to safety…we might not always recognize it at the time, but regardless that hand is always there ready when we need him.
The most freeing part of a ropes course is the zip line. That’s the part where you put 100% trust in the rope and the line and give up control of what is going to happen in the minute or two that follows. The same freeing experience can be had when we stop worrying about whether we’re good enough and trust 100% that Jesus loves us enough that, even though we might not always recognize it, even though we stand and struggle next to Peter and the other disciples, Jesus will always be there to reach down his hand and pull us up out of the water and back to safety. It’s the letting go that’s up to us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)