Today’s issue revolved around the Christmas story that I read with the CNS children every year. Some of the staff and I wondered what that story time will look like while covid-19 is with us? I wear a mask whenever I am at the church during the week. The children and staff also wear their masks faithfully and diligently when they are together. But as you know, our masks can make it harder to hear other people talk to us. These masks often muffle our voices. So how are we going to communicate the joyful message of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ passionately, boldly, and creatively, when it will hard for the children to hear? It is an important question to consider. The pandemic has taken so much away from all of us, we did not want the life-changing message of the gospel to be another loss.
So we started talking this afternoon. . .
The first 2 words that I heard from CNS were, “I wonder. . .” I knew immediately that this conversation was going to be creative and passionate. I was going to get excited about what was to follow. I knew just by the way that the conversation started that I was joining a creatively-laced conversation—a conversation where we would bounce ideas off each other with passion. God would show up all over the place! I knew that when we were done, our product, our creation would be exciting!
We would take what the other person said, think about it for a second, and push the idea onward. Nothing was going to stifle God’s work. . . Clarifying questions would be asked, that’s natural, but those questions would not limit the God-centric work that we were doing for the children of CNS. Again, so much has been lost, we were not going to let covid-19 keep the miracle and passion for Jesus away from the children if we could help it.
I left the conversation to write down what we talked about in the hallway. A short, little 10-minute program sparked 2 full pages of notes and thoughts. God was certainly at work! This led me to wonder about you and the conversations that you are having each day.
CNS is not the only place where covid's effect reach. . . The virus is active in our work environments, at the store, or during appointments. Covid rears its head often by keeping us from being able to passionately engage each other. But when we come together, when we start off with ideas like, “I wonder. . .” rather than thinking in a deficit manner, we grant God space to show up and create a miracle.
Much of our social engagement carries a tenor of fear to it—and covid can heighten that fear in us. But again, there is another possibility that God gives us. Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky address that fear with this short, simple sentence:
“You come to embody hope rather than fear.”
Fear tells us that we cannot do anything different when we are confronted by a problem or someone who disagrees with us. Fear tells us that we have lost too much; we are suffering too greatly to consider something different. Fear says that, when I speak with CNS about a new idea to help support the living gospel in them, that it won’t work because it can’t work.
But our hope in God stands in opposition to fear. Our hope tells us that if we start ‘wondering’ about what can happen, then we are finding space to let God exceed our expectations. I wonder if today, you will living into that hope and embody it!
Blessings
Rev. Derek
No comments:
Post a Comment