September 4

For the past month, I've been using the daily lectionary reading program. I introduced this to the church on Sunday. It'll be the basis of our weekly Sacred Grounds conversation groups that start tonight. I'm excited about this. I'm hoping it'll give folks an opportunity to take time to reflect in news ways on their own spiritual lives. I thought since the focus of the devotions is to help connect pieces of God's story (as found in the sacred writings of our tradition) with our own, that I would begin to do that with my regular entries - that I would use the daily devotional readings to reflect on my own story. This morning I spent time in Psalms 93, Ezekiel 1:15-28, Acts 9:19b-31 & Luke 9:16-25. There were two themes that jumped out for me in the readings. The first came from Acts 9:31. After spending a summer of exploration about various ways of being the church and strenghten the life of the church, it was refreshing to encounter the raw simplicity in Acts as to what makes for a healthy faith community. Eugene Peterson's "The Message" translates the verse to read: "They were permeated with a deep sense of reverence for God. The Holy Spirit was with them, strengthening them. They prospered wonderfully." What a great values check that is. Imagine what would happen in the life of our local churches if they approach their life together in that order. Permeate ourselves with a deep sense of reverence for God? Check. Cultivate an awareness of - and appreciation for - the presence of the Holy Spirit? Check. By the time you got this far in your inventory, it would seem that in most cases the third piece would fall into place. Are we prospering wonderfully? Check. And yet so many times, this approach is reversed. Our efforts to address our life together are approached first from a perspective of prosperity. For example, we begin by examining things like the budget (are we behind or ahead) and the worship attendance (are we up or down from the same time last year), and then go from there. When you begin from these places, you are almost guaranteed of adopting a programmatic approach that is predicated on what WE need to DO to turn those numbers around. In the process, it's easy to lose one's spiritual integrity. We obsess with doing what will work rather than what we are called to do/be. As I head back into my day to day ministry, I'll have to keep the words from Acts 9:31 before me, as I try each day to keep my own priorities in line. The second thing that came up for me came out of the passage from Luke 9:22-25 (the story of Jesus calming the storm for the disciples). The one line that literally jumped off the page for me was Jesus' question to the disciples after he had woken up and calmed the storm. He asked simply, "Where is your faith?" While a traditional reading of this verse would suggest he was suggesting an absence of faith, it reminded me of another way to interpret his question. WHERE is the faith that you do have located? This question has great implications on both the individual and collective levels. Like many of us, those disciples probably relied on all the old standbys first. Weather reports? Check. Sealing of the boats? Check. And so on. Their awarenes of/reliance on/trust in God was tossed in as a lost resort after every other means had been exhausted. Sounds an awful lot like me at times. This morning's scripture invites me to once again wrestle with Jesus' timeless question, "Where is my faith?" Til next time...