Today’s Readings: Psalm 33:1-12; Genesis 12:1-9; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26; Romans 4:13-25
It never ceases to amaze me where the Spirit can lead you if you are open to it. Case in point: me. Several months ago, the community of faith I serve started putting together a Vision, Mission & Values Statement to help guide us in our collective life together. Two things in that statement jumped out at me – neither of which reflected passions I had before the statement was developed. One piece of the Mission Statement read: “We will embrace God’s creation in all of its diversity”; another piece of the Value Statement read: “We will value our place in God’s creation and our responsibility to it”. As I sat with those statements, I began to feel lead to establish a relationship with a group known for its advocacy on behalf of the environment. I did this not as a political act but as a spiritual expression of my desire to more fully embrace my responsibility to God’s creation. Three months after being involved with this group I realized I needed to go one step further and honor a specific piece of God’s creation that especially spoke to me: animals. So I committed myself to supporting a group that works to protect animals. In the new members packet I received when I joined the group, there was an amazing piece of awareness-raising literature that explored the ways in which animals are affected by many of our diets. Within 12 hours of putting the flier down, I had committed myself to going vegetarian. Now if you would have told me 1 year ago that I would be involved in the two groups that I am - and would have become vegetarian on top of that - I would have laughed out loud for I would have been the last person on the face of the earth you would have expected to take such actions. In this way, I know how Abram must have felt in today’s passage from Genesis. For life myself, Abram was going along in a life that was familiar and comfortable. And then – BOOM! – along came God’s call and his life was turned upside down. Many folks read such stories and wonder how people can make such dramatic decisions. The answer is that it’s much easier that you might think – for such decisions bring your life into a sense of peace and harmony that you would otherwise never know. In many ways, it’s much more difficult NOT to answer the call than it is to answer it. I would invite you to sit with the Spirit and see if there are directions in which God might be calling you to go: directions that – if left solely to you and your devices - would be totally beyond you? If you have felt that tug on your life, perhaps you ignored the call as you thought to yourself, “Nice idea, but that’s totally beyond me!” Today, follow Abram’s example and open yourself to that calling in new ways. You can do so knowing that if the calling truly is from God, you won’t have to rely solely upon your own devices to follow it. Til next time…
It never ceases to amaze me where the Spirit can lead you if you are open to it. Case in point: me. Several months ago, the community of faith I serve started putting together a Vision, Mission & Values Statement to help guide us in our collective life together. Two things in that statement jumped out at me – neither of which reflected passions I had before the statement was developed. One piece of the Mission Statement read: “We will embrace God’s creation in all of its diversity”; another piece of the Value Statement read: “We will value our place in God’s creation and our responsibility to it”. As I sat with those statements, I began to feel lead to establish a relationship with a group known for its advocacy on behalf of the environment. I did this not as a political act but as a spiritual expression of my desire to more fully embrace my responsibility to God’s creation. Three months after being involved with this group I realized I needed to go one step further and honor a specific piece of God’s creation that especially spoke to me: animals. So I committed myself to supporting a group that works to protect animals. In the new members packet I received when I joined the group, there was an amazing piece of awareness-raising literature that explored the ways in which animals are affected by many of our diets. Within 12 hours of putting the flier down, I had committed myself to going vegetarian. Now if you would have told me 1 year ago that I would be involved in the two groups that I am - and would have become vegetarian on top of that - I would have laughed out loud for I would have been the last person on the face of the earth you would have expected to take such actions. In this way, I know how Abram must have felt in today’s passage from Genesis. For life myself, Abram was going along in a life that was familiar and comfortable. And then – BOOM! – along came God’s call and his life was turned upside down. Many folks read such stories and wonder how people can make such dramatic decisions. The answer is that it’s much easier that you might think – for such decisions bring your life into a sense of peace and harmony that you would otherwise never know. In many ways, it’s much more difficult NOT to answer the call than it is to answer it. I would invite you to sit with the Spirit and see if there are directions in which God might be calling you to go: directions that – if left solely to you and your devices - would be totally beyond you? If you have felt that tug on your life, perhaps you ignored the call as you thought to yourself, “Nice idea, but that’s totally beyond me!” Today, follow Abram’s example and open yourself to that calling in new ways. You can do so knowing that if the calling truly is from God, you won’t have to rely solely upon your own devices to follow it. Til next time…
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