“There is not enough wrong with it to leave
and there is just enough right with it to stay.”
Dear Caldwell,
Member Ann Alford mentioned the quote above this week when she was volunteering in the office and it struck a chord with me. It comes from the book Pastrix by Rev. Nadia Bolz-Webber, who took a highly unconventional route to finding and living in God’s grace.
As Bolz-Webber’s comment reminds us, there are few things in life – if any – that are ever just the way we want them to be. There are times when all we can see in life are signs of incompleteness. We pray for a peaceful world, but are drenched again with news of what appears to be a desperate and violent act of terrorism. We work for justice only to read that the poor are falling further behind and the oppressed are still crying out for help. We seek wholeness in our relationships and are reminded, yet again, of our human shortcomings, or the other person’s – or both. We launch a new ministry and then question its success even before it’s really gotten started.
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. We celebrated the Holy Spirit last week, the arrival of the “third person” of the Holy Trinity. This week, we celebrate the fullness of God, a God who is “fully equipped” to meet us where we are and relate to our every-day lives. There is a lot of doctrine about the Holy Spirit, much of it boring and dry. But this year I am thinking about a God who is whole and how that God wants wholeness for us – wholeness of body, soul, mind, spirit and faith. Is your faith “whole?”
That’s what we will be thinking about Sunday, along with our normal (did I just use the word “normal” in relation to Caldwell?) mix of other aspects of worship – prayer and song, giving, forgiving and receiving God’s forgiveness. We welcome friend and guest worship leader Abong Fankam and will pray over her daughter Mongai, as well as all others in need of God’s healing touch.
Come and help make worship “whole” with your presence and participation.
See you then.
In Christ,
John