Bread crumbs on my hands.

Having just partaken in Holy Communion, my mind has been thinking a great deal recently about the nourishing nature of bread. One detail that often comes to mind when I stand behind the Table of the Lord, and before the Body of Christ, is the crumbs that fall into my Book of Common Worship as I break the bread during the Communion liturgy. 

I often find myself rubbing my hands together as I finish the liturgy as a way of cleaning them off before proceeding. A fine dust of flour and crumbs falls on the pages of my book each time and I wonder if Jesus had the same experience during His Last Supper? 

Those crumbs stay wedged in my book until the next time I open the pages and begin the liturgy again and I invite the Body of Christ to come to the Table of the Lord with me. 

In my heart the Communion Table is a sacred space and a space made open by Jesus for us. 

As a Presbyterian student pastor, I was unable to administer communion for 4 years when I first began preaching God's word, so now communion remains very special to me. It reminds me that God's care of myself, my family, and the Church, takes on a form that I often cannot vocally express. How is it that simple bread and juice means so much to me that I wept the first time I stood behind the table and said those words of Jesus to the Body of Christ? 

This morning I was reading Isaac S. Villegas' words about manna, and as I read them, I heard echoes of Communion and God's care for us that I wanted to share with you. He wrote:

"God sends manna because God cares for the human needs, God's love matters for our lives. To talk about care is to get specific about the nature of God's love. God's care is what God's love looks like; care is what God's love feels like."

You may not be taking communion today, but I suspect that you will have the opportunity to enjoy some bread, and as you do, maybe you will feel the crumbs on your hands. As you to, I wonder if you might pause and remember the care of God and the love of God that can be found in bread? And if you feel the crumbs, give thanks to the Lord for the care that He offers to you. . .  

Bearing Gently--Galatians 6:1-6. Sermon from Sunday July 6, 2025

     Last week I ended with the word that I believe sums up the freedom that comes in Christ, a word that speaks about our value to God. It is also the word that symbolizes how Jesus invites us to come to him, to be with him, to dwell with him, and last week I said that word is: communion.

Now as we return to Galatians, we finish around this table with Paul’s concluding words to the Church. For chapter 6 invites us to adopt a posture when we are together.    

Move 1- sharing the burden

         While one concept in verse 2 gains the lion’s share of the emphasis and consideration when this chapter is read, I want us to remember what Paul says to the church in Galatia—but from a slightly different emotional direction. For the church in Galatia is a church that in chapter 1:4, is guilty of, “turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ.”[1] This is how Paul began his letter. 

         These are people of the church, like you and me, people who are called by God, and people who have turned their calling. And while we do have chapters in Galatians to articulate that ‘turning,’ the same sin is always at work in the church.   

For five chapters now Paul has called the Church back toward Christ. 

He has called them to live faithfully in response to their high calling from God. As I said last week, Paul reminded them of their freedom in Christ. This freedom leads to care for one another, and it leads the Church to serve their community. And while that calling, to a people who appear lost, or confused, or misguided, could be seen as a word of rebuke. . . at the end of this letter, Paul uses a different approach. 

         Rather than hold some up, or wag his finger at others, in verse 2 Paul, draws out humility. . . Paul calls forth gentleness in our practice of faith when we are together and as we go out among the people. Paul asks each of us to look at the works of other members of the church and to take a sense of pride in their work and not in ours. 

         In the concluding words from Paul the church is told to gently and humbly help one another (verse 1). And in verse 2, “share each other’s burden.”[2]

If you were following with me in your Bible, you might have read, “bear one another’s burdens,” that is the rendering from the NRSV and KJV is close to that. And while that is right, and I do not want to fault any translation committee or the work they have done, I wonder what it would look like if the church of Jesus saw what we do not as ‘bearing a burden’ but as ‘sharing the burden?”

And there is a significant difference to consider here. 

         As we come to the Table of the Lord, that is the focus for you, and that is the invitation for us. As we think about as the bread that is broken and the cup that is passed, how are we ‘sharing the burden?’ 

But this is not the end of our thinking or reflecting. . . As you leave this service, or watch it later, or listen to it in the future, think about what happens in your life, and the life of this community as we stop simply ‘bearing burdens’ but ‘sharing that same burden?’

         And as I said there is a difference. 

Move 2- the difference.

         The first thing to note about the difference is that for Paul and in his word choice here, there is a sense of gentleness in this pericope when we share the burden as the church. Throughout verses 1-6 Paul reinforces his meaning by using words that are filled, or identified with, gentleness. . . Gentle verbs. . . And gentle actions. Just a quick glance at the text and you will find them: 

         “A spirit of gentleness”—verse 1. Right from the beginning Paul sets the table for how the posture of this work should look. Gentle. . . humble restoration taking place. In a community where this choice is not often elevated, consider how counter cultural this choice would be?!? 

         Then carries that tone forward in verse 3 where he writes: “If you think you are too important to help someone…you are not.” While we might read it, and add a tone of rebuke to these words, Paul does not. In his writing that tone is missing.  

         But the Apostle is not done yet in helping to remind us of our place with each other, In verse 4 Paul says, “you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well, and you won’t need to compare yourself to others.”[3]  

         On and on it goes. We are responsible for our own actions and we are called by God to be gentle when considering the actions of others. We are called to be humble and kind, rather than brash, aggressive, or judgmental. That posture is left for God alone. Our eyes firmly fixed on who Jesus calls us to be and not on what someone else is doing. This choice, this posture helps return to back to verse 2 where we are sharing the burden. And the word for sharing also occurs in this formulation in Luke 10:4 where the disciples are sent out into their community and told to ‘carry’ or ‘bear’ nothing with them. But to rely on the gentleness and goodness of the people to whom they travel and witness to. 

Further, when we dig a bit deeper into the text and into Paul’s theological lexicon again, we learn that for Paul:


“The community [of the church] is obliged to rally around the overwhelmed [rally around each other], while individuals remain responsible for the stewardship God assigns [to] them. . . Here the ‘call to share the burden’ functions as a call for patient, and sacrificial fellowship.” (Taken from Biblebub.com)

           In this sense we are not doing the work for someone else, but we are providing the space, the safe space, for them to encounter God and allow God’s self-revelation to mold, shape, and change them.
For congregational life thrives when believers share one another’s burdens while not neglecting individual responsibility that comes from discipleship and the faithful on God’s word personally. We do not do the work for the other person. But when we are with them, when we hold them, as we have done before at this church with those who grieve, those who are healing, we share a burden as the Body of Christ and as Paul calls us to do.

               We surround each other, providing a safe space to work out own salvation and faith continually in the Freedom that comes in Jesus Christ.

Conclusion
        And this freedom leads us back to the Table of the Lord which is set before us.

[1] Galatians 1:4 NLT. 

 

[2] Galatians 6:2 NLT. 

 

[3] All scriptures in this section are taken from the New Living Translation. 

Time to replant. But I have not done this before.

This past spring JonMark helped me select three plants to put in my office (four if you count the one he gave me from his biology class). We left the nursery and he repotted them and gave me some basic instructions: water them (but too much), and make sure they get plenty of sun... but not too much. And throughout the spring my plants prospered. 

The cactus, well, I just left that one alone. Cactuses thrives with little water and plenty of heat. So this summer, I am seeing what I assume is signs of vitality and joy. Spikes have grown all over the cactus as have a white, cottony, substance on the top. That one is doing well. 

The succulent is growing like crazy. I water it once a week. Turn it occasionally so each side gets plenty of sun and, as Elsa would tells us. . . I let it go. This one started close to four inches high and now it is about a foot tall. As I look at it I think, 'yeah I can do this.'

The aloe plant in my coffee cup also is doing fine. Five mini stalks are growing and I will need to do something about that. It is getting too big for the cup. We put this in a cup without repotting it so the water can drip through the soil and not get overwatered and the evaporate back into the soil--I think. JonMark said something about this being a special way to help to grow and not take on too much water.

But the orange marmalade. That poor plant. Today I went to check on it, and, well now I have an empty pot to work with. The plant completely broke free from its root system and died. Truth be told I was wondering what I was doing wrong with this one for some time. I never saw a flower bloom which is why I bought it in the first place. So now I need to move the aloe into the former home of the marmalade. It needs more space to grow anyway. 

Truth be told though I have too much to do today! 

I am too busy to take the two pots to the kitchen counter and perform the task of repotting a plant. While I know it will only take five minutes at the most, I am just too busy. Maybe I will call Emma and ask her to do it? 

While you may not have had the same struggles that I am having with plants today, I bet you are familiar with the mindset--too busy for a five minute task. Maybe even too busy to spend a little extra time with the Lord. 

In her book Sabbath in the Suburbs, I remembered the words of MaryAnn McKibben Dana where she wrote something to my heart as I kept looking at the pots on my window sill throughout this morning: 

"I didn't want to live the kind of life in which an extra four minutes were so crucial to my schedule that I would petition the county government to get my way. . . [But] I, too, treated time as a sacred commodity to be hoarded. It was a constant struggle to keep from gripping tightly to every four-minute nugget of time, maximizing every moment, multitasking as if my life depended on it." 

I wonder if today, you can locate those extra four minutes... maybe five. Give them over to the Lord and notice how differently your day will become. I bet you will be surprised.  

Oh, as for the fifth plant. The African violet is fine... I think. It is still just a leaf that I water and wait, but I hear those plants are often tough to deal with. But I will be patient and watchful. 

 

Freedom in Christ--Galatians 5:3:13-25. Sermon from Sunday June 29, 2025

            Not long ago it was Pentecost, the time where we recall the empowerment of the church. Peter and the disciples have begun their work of sharing the gospel and teaching what Christ taught them to their community. 

            But as we all know, and have all experienced, internal strife and internal struggles can limit the effectiveness of the work that we do for the Lord. 

            While this text can easily hold our attention in one of two places, both lists of Fruits of the Spirit, the massive list of sins that the church does not want to fall into, I want us to back up to the previous section: verses 13-15 and consider those words from Paul as a challenge to hold fast to the true nature of the gospel. 

For in those first verses of our text a popular concept from today is elevated, and this concept is held in contrast with a worldview that we see each day. Freedom contrasted with biting and devouring in the church. 

            Let’s examine them one at a time before returning to the place where we will start. 

Move 1- Freedom.

            When I say freedom, we are quick to identify that term with July 4^th, with both the religious and the political freedom that we witness in our country and upon which our country was founded. And while that is one definition and one application of freedom, the term used here by Paul for ‘freedom’ carries with it a deeper definition for the church. 

This deeper definition also carries with it a deeper theological richness that we need to recall and hold onto before we get to the list of sins in verse 19-21 and the Fruits of the Spirit in 22 & 23. 

            Freedom in Paul’s theological lexicon: “signifies the liberating reality that believers possess in Christ. More than political emancipation or philosophical autonomy, it is the God-given release from every form of spiritual bondage so that the redeemed may serve the Lord willingly, joyfully, and fruitfully.”[1] (REPEAT)

            Notice how Paul takes our concept of freedom, the one that you and I might bring to any discussion on the idea of freedom, and Paul expands this idea and gives it theological legs to stand upon. He widens it, while he brings the Lord into the discussion.

            Freedom in Paul’s theological mind is linked to our freedom in Christ and our choice to serve the Lord willingly and joyfully and ultimately fruitfully together. 

We are free in Christ and that freedom cannot be held back and it cannot be held only to ourselves. Our freedom in Christ calls us forward as the church. It calls us to care for the community, and it specifically calls us edify the church and build up one another—the two (Freedom and living and working in Christ) cannot be separated and Paul did not intend for them to be. 

            And in Paul’s mind, these two ideas were never meant to be separated. We are free and we live and work in Christ as the church. 

This is a popular theme that we will read and consider throughout the remainder of Pauline epistles. For when we have Christ in our hearts, when we live with Christ at the center of our being, and allow Christ to guide our actions, we are truly free to care for each other in the church, and we are free to serve our community in faith. 

Move 2- biting and devouring

            While we are free in Christ, Paul is aware that the church in Galatia, and the church of our past, and the church today, right now, we are working in and building, we will be confronted with a challenge.

            And while we might be tempted to think that these challenges are different; that they bear no resemblance to each other. I wonder if there are some similarities, some underlying theme that Paul is speaking about that we can take with us when we face our community and serve them? 

For as Paul writes about this challenge in Galatia, he is just as vivid in his description of that challenge as he was when thinking about freedom in Christ. So, his words then, they should strike at our hearts now when we come to this passage. For while the context is different—it is not truly that different.

            The two words Paul uses here to speak about the challenge are: biting and devouring.

And he warns us not bite or devour one another or risk being consumed. Let’s look at them separately and notice how they are diametrically opposed to the freedom in Christ that comes in our personal relationship with Jesus. 

Biting

            When Paul says that ‘biting’ occurs, the first thing that he is saying that this behavior is taking place inside the church. 

While certainly external persecution happens, by his word choice this suffering, this biting, wounds and breaks the church down. The term that Paul employs in verse 15, it speaks directly into the church. 

Paul warns the church then, and today, that we are to watch our destructive speech when we are together as the Body. Watch our destructive behaviors for they have a ‘biting,’ a tear with teeth, a painful impact, on the Body of Christ first. 

            For Paul this behavior is tragic because these are self-inflicted wounds that the church causes to itself that could, and if we are freed by Christ then these wounds should be, avoided. These wounds are unnecessary. . . but we choose to bite. We choose to tear rather than build up and to be free in Christ.

            This biting amplifies the sinful choices that we make every day that are listed in verses 19-21 and they lead us toward devouring one another. 

Devouring

            The second word that Paul uses is devouring and it is just as vivid and just and painful to consider. 

            If biting hurts the church internally then devouring is what happens after the biting action and choice takes place here. The devouring is how our life here looks after we have bitten each other repeatedly and consistently. 

While ‘biting’ only occurs in this once place in Paul’s epistles, the word for devouring appears in other places in the scriptures. Most notably this is the word that the elder brother accuses his younger prodigal brother of doing with his portion of the inheritance. The younger. . . devoured it. And in that case, you can begin to imagine what the impact of the ‘devouring’ action and choice looks like. 

            In that case it was: “utterly devour[ed], leaving nothing; ferociously consume all the way down, i.e. with a rapacious, voracious appetite – leaving only ruination, without hope of recovery (or even remains).[2]

            In our day, in the places that we go, in the people that we seek to care for in the church and throughout our local community, I think that each of you can put a face not just being bitten, but we can put a face to what it looks like, and who you know, who has been devoured in this way. . . We know people in the community of faith who might, if they were honest in the moment say, they know what it feels like to live in a place without the hope of recovery. 

Move 3- back to freedom.

            Because Paul warns us about the dangers of being bitten and devoured and consumed by one another, we need to once again to return to the freedom that comes from Christ in these places of biting and devouring in the church and in the community. We need to find the strength to help each other, and those of our community, reach this freedom in Christ together that is promised and offered in Jesus. 

We need to be reminded of the healing that comes in Christ Jesus as we are together as the Body of Christ. We need to practice and live through and with the Fruits of the Spirit that this text ends with. 

For Paul, “Freedom isn’t a perfect, unassailable state we attain after passionate campaigning and willful struggle. It’s an experience we can attain right now by living, like Jesus, in the face of enslaving temptations, with patience, gentleness and generosity. Then we may call our lives, and the life of this church, a parable for our times.”[3]

Freedom in Christ means a change in our hearts where we move from one state, one choice back, towards another where we love our neighbors as ourselves (verse 14 which is a word from Jesus in Matthew 7) in care and support. Freedom means moving back from the choice to bite and devour others and back towards loving each other as Christ loved His church. 
Conclusion
            So, the challenge of this text is one of meditation and reflection for the work is never done because we are always confronted with the choice to bite and devour. Yet we are also always offered the freedom in Christ. 
            And we have a final word for that freedom that comes in our relationship with Christ, a word that captures how important to God it is that we, the Body of Christ come together in the freedom that Jesus won for us. . . and that word is: communion. 

---

[1] https://biblehub.com/greek/1657.htm  accessed on June 25, 2025. 

 

[2] https://biblehub.com/greek/2719.htm  accessed on June 26, 2025. 

 

[3] https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-second-sunday-after-trinity/  accessed on June 25, 2025. 

 

Up and down. . . a lesson in caring.

It was shortly after 7:30 last night. Jennifer was drying her hair after a night of swimming and supper while I scrolled through the evening news on my phone. Outside the thunder of the storm was growing. I sighed. . . I love a good thunderstorm. They make some of the best sleeping weather. 

Then she interrupted me. "Did you hear that?" I did not hear anything She said it again before completing her thought: "It sounds like a horn. There it is again. Get up and look."

"A horn," I wondered. I expected perhaps a tornado siren but not a horn. 

Rushing to look out our window I was shocked to see seven horses trotting across the church driveway with a white Toyota pickup honking their horn behind the horses attempting to keep them off McConnells Highway. Jennifer was indeed right--she heard a horn.

Of the many things I thought I might see on a 'dark and stormy night' seven horses in my driveway was not high on my list. 

Over the next hour, Jennifer and I, with several church members alongside of us, attempted to find these misplaced horses and get them back to their home. The horses settled, for a bit behind the Family Life Center between the cemetery and the playground. Back there is a fence and the horses ran free and fast in the grass. I could not tell if they were afraid or having the time of their lives. But it did not matter. They were safe and they could graze.  

Up and down that hill I travelled trying to keep my eye on them. I walked that hill so many times that I lost track of the count. My knees ached. The shoes I wore, my dad's old Crocs, are a size too small so they kept slipping off my feet in the wet grass. Up and down I went because I knew it was what was needed in the moment as others watched the road for the owner of the horses.

We do a lot of things in the church for nameless and faceless people of our community. But we do it because we care and because it is what God asks us to serve and care. So I wonder today if you can find a place or a moment to serve a little bit more, a little bit deeper because it is what God asks of you? 

Sound of Sheer Silence--1 Kings 19:8-15a. Sermon for Sunday June 22, 2025.

            Everybody, and I mean everybody, has a mountaintop experience in their faith journey and in their lives. Sometimes they recognize that God is with them in these moments and sometimes that truth is veiled from their hearts and minds. But regardless, God is present. . . God is always present. 

And so, when the mountaintop experiences happen, this is a truth at we cannot deny—God was, and is, there. 

            And converse is also true. If we all have mountaintop experiences, then we all have valley periods. And if God was present at (or on) the mountaintop with us, then God is also present in the darkest of valleys. I have thought, and talked, about the valley periods recently with you as a church, so we do not need to think about them too much more right now. 

            Today let’s shift the perspective back up the mountaintop; to the point of elevation from which we see everything and can notice everything. The point where our breath is taken away and we marvel at what is taking place there with God right by our side. 

            For like Elijah in 1 Kings 18, at VBS this past week we have our own opportunities to see God at work and notice that we were indeed living and operating on the mountaintop. 

What happens next is up to us—as it was up to Elijah.  

Move 1- chapter 18

            As we know before the occurrence of our text, Elijah had a front row seat, with a literal mountaintop view, of the movement of God’s action before the nation of Israel. The 600 prophets of Baal spent the day cutting themselves, dancing around an altar they constructed to their god. They called out to their god, and at every turn an absent god who does not exist and did not respond. 

            On that mountaintop, Elijah mocks them. 

With God’s voice and presence in his heart, Elijah taunts these false prophets until the moment when he prays to the Living God and fire falls from heaven. 

The fire licks up the water around the sacrifice. The fire consumes the sacrifice itself, and it melts the rocks of the altar that Elijah built. And everyone knows that there is only one God—Yahweh. The view from the mountaintop that day was great and it should have been transformative for everyone especially Elijah. 

            The view from the mountaintop was splendid on many levels. It was powerful. There was a chance to testify to how great our God is on the mountaintop. If anyone doubted that there is one and only one God in Israel those doubts should be put to rest. But as we know that is not the case. 

            Jezebel pronounces that if it is the last thing that she will do, Elijah will die—this is recorded in 1 Kings 19:2. And this very declaration, which should have been nothing more than noise and chatter to a servant of the Lord who witnessed the power and presence of God from his view on the mountaintop. . . but instead it shakes him to his core and Elijah runs. 

And we find him in verse 8 of our text taking refuge in a cave. 

            We might have been on the mountaintop ourselves a time or two; been up there witnessing and marveling at how God is at work in this community and having great reasons to hope for what is to come. 

But the fall from that place can be quick for any person or people who do not remember where the Lord is and what the Lord is doing in our midst. The mountaintop should help to solidify our faith and remind us of the faithfulness of God. But in Elijah’s story, he forgets what he just experienced… may we not repeat that in our lives as Bible school ends or as any other program of this church comes and goes. I hope we will continue to see how and where God is at work. 

Move 2- what are you doing?

            Our text today is bookended with a question that God asks Eljah. It is a question that you and I also are asked when we once knew of the goodness of the mountaintop but seem to have forgotten how great our God is, and we have wandered into our own metaphorical cave. And the question is: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”[1]

            Now as we know, Elijah will try and answer this question, and he will fail. 

Like a child standing before an authority figure (a parent, a teacher), Elijah should just stand there, and he should be still before God. For as we know when we are still before God, when we give God the space to speak to our hearts, God will speak, and God will revive us. 

Yet also like a child before that authority figure Elijah attempts to formulate a response that justifies his position and elevates his choices and actions to flee from the presence and safety of the Lord and opt to hide himself in a cave. 

“What you are doing here, Elijah?” 

            God’s question to Elijah, and to us, is a question that asks us about our faith and our understanding that God is always with us, and further, when God is with us there is no reason to hide or retreat. 

For in fact, God knows why Elijah is in that cave. God sent the Angel of the Lord earlier in this chapter with bread and water to feed Elijah in that place twice—a fact that escaped Elijah’s mind as he stands before God. 

I wonder if God wants a response verbally from His servant or if God is asking a question with no answer to cause the person(s) to pause and to ponder? I wonder if God wants Elijah to return to that place of hope and stillness and wonder in his heart: ‘Why did I leave the mountaintop? Why did I leave the place where I could testify to God being at work and God being present in the first place? Why did I forget the miracle of God’s presence and opt for a place of doubt and hesitation?”

            And as Elijah fumbles through a response, much as we would do when we are in our own metaphorical cave, God steps in again, and God responds in a way that the Scriptures cannot capture.  

But it is God’s response.

Let’s notice the response together again. . . 

First there are the physical acts of a great wind, or an earthquake, or fire. They would shake the prophet’s heart; they might get his attention. But those physical demonstrations or movements are not what causes him to cover his face and stand at the mouth of the cave in silence and wait. 

It is the sound of sheer silence that is recorded in verse 12. I wonder how long that sheer silencelasted. The ESV translates the words here as “a low whisper.” 

But it is the same concept. . . not more noise or more justification or more proof as Elijah offered it to God or as our world offers it to each other. The sound of sheer silence. God responds differently. 

            I wonder if you have heard that same sound of ‘sheer silence’ from the Lord in your faith journey recently? I can tell you that this week at VBS, if you were listening among all the commotion, all the games, songs, food, and lessons, that “low whisper,” that “sheer silence” was speaking to us and to anyone who was listening and who stood there? It was profound. 

Move 3- sheer silence

            Now this does not mean a sound of absence or the sound of ‘no response’ coming from God. That is the temptation that we like to fall back upon in seasons like this or in times when God seems far off… times like what Elijah might have been feeling or dealing with. 

I do not believe that God chooses to be absent, and God does not offer ‘no response’ either when the people of the Lord need to hear from their God in the moment of need—something which we have also needed in seasons as families and as a church. 

But the sound of ‘sheer silence,’ the sound of a ‘low whisper’ from God it touches deeply into our hearts, and it moves us. It takes what we might think of only as common place, and it becomes a moment of reverence. A moment of faith and trust. A moment where doubt can creep in, but in that low whispering from God, our faith is strengthened, and we hear and feel the call to service and action. 

That sound also changes the prophet. It reinforces Elijah’s heart and reminds him of his call. He could not stay in the cave any longer. He might want to. We might want to. But the sound of God’s voice, mysterious and silent as it can be, should call us to action and service when those around us might choose differently. 

The low whisper of God reminds us that once we lived and served the Lord on the mountaintop and with God by our side, we can continue to serve God regardless of the physical location or the challenges that each day brings to us. 

Conclusion 

            As I said VBS was a place, noisy, stressful, hot, all wrapped up in God’s presence. There were plenty of times when we could have thrown up our hands in frustration and stomped off to hide in our own caves away from God and away from each other. 

It could have been a struggle to see and hear God being with us at all. 

But if you come over and watch the video, and if you are listening, you might just notice the sound of God’s voice resonating around the program. That same voice of the Lord is calling to us now to move out from this service into our community yet again and practice our call faithfully and diligently. 

---

[1] 1 Kings 8:9, 13 ESV. 

 

Settling for a doubt... it is much easier.

Here at Bethesda it is the middle of VBS week. The church is buzzing with kids singing, playing, and learning about the Lord. I believe that when the church cares for its community and is reaching out into the community, we are planting seeds that time to grow. At the same time, we are also tending to the seeds that have been planted by others for the work of discipleship is one of partnering and patience. 

But when we are tasked with patience by the Lord, doubt can also creep in because we like to see the fruit of our labor come quickly and come in an overwhelming way that gives doubts no chance to grow. 

Today as I was reading I came across an interesting statement that I wanted to share that speaks to this point: 

"In fact, most Christians have settled down under their doubts, as to a sort of inevitable malady, from which they suffer acutely, but to which they must try to be resigned as a part of the necessary discipline of this earthly life; and they lament over their doubts as a man might lament over his rheumatism. . ." 

Reading on further it seems that Hannah Whitall Smith's point is that for many people in the Church have just come to accept that doubting is part of their faith. We work... we doubt. As we encounter our community we doubt that God is working and that God is with us in the work that we are doing. Perhaps our doubts might even lead us to wonder if we are forsaken or 'getting what we deserve.'

We work, we struggle, and we doubt. It is a vicious cycle that some in the church fall into.

But as I consider this quotation again, I wonder: maybe the Lord is asking us to look at our work, our community, and our faith practices from a different perspective? I wonder if we can put away the doubting and instead just live believe and continue to serve. . . 

God is not done with us yet. And will not leave us to struggle alone in this world.