So, I'm thinking it has been perhaps 3 or 4 days since my last post...what happens to the time. Maybe that's why I'm so old...I only spend 3 days and 6 go by!
I heard a comment this morning that a particular kind of nurturing community could only happen at "our church." And, while I'll tell anyone that Forest Hills Presbyterian in High Point, NC is one of the strongest environments for the spiritual nurture of children and youth that I have ever experienced, the possibility for nurture is never limited to one place. God self-limited in Jesus to a particular time and place, but then after Jesus died, God at work in the Holy Spirit calls and enables all Christians to work as Jesus did. We don't often do it as well, but that is the miracle of God's work. Somehow, through our limitation and weakness, God's work happens.
But my thought as our young people are moving to college this week and next, or moving into the working world, or into mission service, is that what they describe as our "particular kind of nurturing" is now moving out into the world. Each of them, each of us, has benefitted from the spiritual nurture and the community support of our congregations. And each of us is called from that community back into a world that is hungry for that nurture.
Instead of lamenting that we wish everyone would come in and experience nurture, we are called to take that nurture out into the world. That often requires more of us than we want to give...and it removes that "special status" that we so enjoy. Each Christian community has particular gifts and strengths. No Christian community is the sole proprietor of any aspect of God's grace.
So, we give thanks for the gifts we have been given. But we better know we are given those gifts to go out and share. The only thing that makes us different and special from the rest of the world is that we have a job to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment