| A Message from the Interim Pastor…
I once read an article that included a quote from the New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright. “What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
We don’t often think of it this way, but everything we do in our lives – and I mean everything – can be divided into two categories – things that build up God’s kingdom and things that tear it down. All too many of us think that it’s only the big things that we do that build God’s kingdom (or big things we fail to do that tear it down). But, in fact, it’s everything that we do. Even the small things.
When we stand in the check-out line at the grocery store, we can grumble and complain about the lack of help, or the capabilities of the help, or the customer with three hundred coupons, or any of a thousand other things, or we can spend the time thinking about how hard it must be for the harried check-out clerk to be so over-worked and have some compassion for him/her. Both will affect how we end up interacting with the clerk when it’s finally our turn and both will affect how God’s kingdom is built up or torn down.
Peace and blessing,
Pastor Michael
|
