A GREAT AND SIMPLE GIFT

It seems to me that one of the greatest simple gifts that we can give to another person is a safe place to talk about what is going on inside. It can be so hard to find someone that is willing to listen carefully and caringly to what we have to say. Someone who is able to just let us be who and where we are. If there is no one to lovingly listen, then we are not likely to speak honestly. Why would we? And often, if we do not speak, we cannot get past the places where we are stuck. This is especially true when we are talking about where we are with God. Often we do not need advice, insight, explanation, or anything else. We just need someone to listen, and to care, so we can listen to ourselves along with them and through it all better understand what we mean for having said it. I believe God works in these simple, safe conversations.

LIVING TOGETHER

I want to draw your attention to two remarkable gifts that we have recieved from the One who made us. First of all, we are, everyone of us, alive. The Scriptures record that when God created the very first human from the dust of the ground, he "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." And people have been breathing ever since. With every new breath, every beat of your heart, your body softly cries out that you are alive! Find your pulse, take note of your breathing. God has given you life. How cool is that! And what is more, he has given you others who are alive to share together in this adventure, this journey, this mystery. Every one you see, even those that only briefly cross your path, everyone of them, is drawing breath, is pulsing with life. And all that breathing, all that pulsing, all that living is a present moment, incomprehensible, ongoing giving by God.
As a church family, a community of those given life, we are trying to experience this life, these lives, we have been given as fully as possible. And we are seeking to experience it all together. I want to see if expressing some thoughts in this space can help us along on this shared pathway. If nothing else I want to help us to notice the miraculous, mysterious nature of what we have been given in this gift of Life Together. Perhaps we can be both more "Together" and at the same time more fully "Alive."