April 01, 2011
Continuing Ed.
One of my fellow Toastmasters brought her mother to a meeting and at the conclusion the guest said, “This has been interesting and I’ve learned a lot this morning that I’ll be able to use.” My initial reaction was that her comment was merely a compliment to the club, our interaction and instruction…she then told me she was 92 years-old and lived in a retirement community. No doubt her attitude and willing spirit is something our preachers would like to hear from all elderly believers after the Sunday sermon, ‘…I’ve learned a lot this morning that I’ll be able to use’.
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3 comments:
Gail;
-----I see the Bible portraying church to be a pool of resources brought together amidst a collection of needs. The resources/needs are about physical necessities, mental and emotional health, and spiritual understanding, direction, and inspiration. The same benefactors bearing resources are beneficiaries needing resources such that the whole body is a living interrelationship of serviced servers learning all the depths and beauty of participation in one another. For the goal is support for one another as we each move through the difficulties of this present age on our way to the comforts and joys of the perfect age. The love entailed in the goal becomes a natural attraction, even a beckoning and call, for those not knowing the Lord to come and join the supporting love in Christ, like He prayed, “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” (John 17:20) This unity of His believers is a sermon about which those of the world having the attitude and willing spirits will say, “I’ve learned a lot that I’ll be able now to use eternally.”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
When I was pastoring I remember one guy in his eighties who seemed to be coming alive in the Lord again. It is encouraging to me because I want to keep growing until I go home. It happens.
Grace and peace.
Pumice;
-----Our perceptions are often diverted to considering such things as constructing a church building, upgrading a sound system, or kicking off a new service program as doing big things for the Lord. And they are. But they are not the bigger things. Those are the genuine twinkle in your eye and the welcoming smile on your face that tells the fellow next to you he is meaningful. The bigger things are doing kindly and gently what you must do, and doing the rest out of the kindness of having considered that fellow’s station. It was a humble, young lady just out of childhood who birthed our God into the form of a man. She was just doing what young women do. It was a couple hungry beggars who found the Assyrian army laid waste and reported back to the besieged city. They were only doing what hungry beggars do. It was just a young shepherd boy who dropped Goliath in his tracks. He was only doing what the courage of a shepherd does.
-----Yet their simple acts multiplied to the benefits of countless souls. The evil of this world is systemic. It less often eats the fabric of decency like a shark and more often eats it like a school of piranha. This is the nature of the war between good and evil. That isn’t to say no hungry sharks are in the waters; it is to say life consists vastly more of subtleties, each one bearing more subtleties until the waters are clouded with what no one man can control. But genuine praise be to God, the same principle of warfare evil enjoys godliness enjoys. It too is systemic.
-----A kindly smile given from godliness knows not what piranha bites a fiber of your neighbor’s life. But the miracle of the smile is the participation of the Spirit in strengthening the fiber to send the piranha off with an empty stomach. Then to what might your neighbor’s smile attach? Smiles alone are not the only subtleties mixing it up in the fray. Generosity, zeal, patience, forbearance, contrition, humility, consideration, sympathy, forgiveness, peacefulness, joy, submission, compassion, thankfulness, hospitality, purity, goodness, contentment, graciousness are just a few of the works God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. They too multiply and reverberate throughout those to whom they are shown, invoking the movement of the Spirit to spark minor miracles in major quantities. This in no way diminishes the necessity of preaching and teaching and constructing the church building with its sound system to facilitate the service programs. They just form the waters without which these whales would be feckless.
-----So having preached to and inspired old folk to stitch fabric and carry water you have done great service amidst the fray. Surely your efforts have rippled across the pond. I too look forward to my old age, mindfully building in place as quickly as I can all the godly attitudes that hopefully will take me out like a July 4th sparkler clutched in His fingers.
Love you,
Steve Corey
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