Poured out for the world...........

That was the theme for this year's assembly, and I would guess to some it describes what I consider the worst stereotypes held about people of faith.  Our culture doesn't have a great deal of space for sacrifice or sacrificial giving.  Our advertising is about acquiring and achieving and attaining.......certainly not about being 'poured out for the world.'

Yet this is the very gift we have received in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus - a creating and creative God who poured life into the incarnate Jesus, taking on the limitations of our fleshly existence for the sake of those whom God created in the beginning.  Then Jesus poured out himself - giving, granting, sharing, teaching, leading, guiding,correcting, loving, healing....dying....so we might know a different way of living a full and abundant life.  Then in his resurrection Jesus carried the creation back to the Creator God.

God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit are poured out into our world - an act of love which calls into life all that is broken and lost.  No one can move in this world without the Spirit moving around, with and for their sake.  No one ....and as Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans, not even pestilence, famine, sorrow, powers, or other creatures.....can separate us from this great love of God poured out in Jesus.  When you go swimming in this world that God created you will get wet with the love of God, whether you like it or not.

But here's the amazing thing.  When you pour yourself out for others, when you give beyond politeness and even beyond 'substantial', when you love enough to forgive, when you seek the light wherever you are.....you will be transformed.  When you lose yourself, you find yourself.  When you release your deadly grasp of this life, you discover life abundant.

Others may look at all this and see people of faith as doormats and Pollyannas and a bunch of other weak, powerless, even silly images.  People of faith know that in giving we receive and in dying we are raised to eternal life.....today, tomorrow, until eternity is all in all.

Blessed? Bless!

It's not about how much you have or how much you give away.

If you can look at your life, your hands, your family, your job.....add anything you want....and call yourself  'blessed' than turn around and bless another.

Thanks and kudos to Chris Syrell for this succinct insight.  Thanks to God for the blessings which pour down upon us - and the opportunity to pour out blessings on others.

Serving others......

Since my week started off with 5 hours of work at Ten Tons of Love, I think I will start there.  All kinds of thoughts run through your head when you do the work of sorting the cast-offs of SU students going home for the summer. 

One bag had 8 pair of women's underwear and an equal number of bras.  How many did she own? 

One pair of leather boots were so soft, and in such good condition, you are lead to wonder, what will she do next year when the snow comes?

Apparently the men at SU shower immediately before filling their donation bags because the towels are very damp when they get to the sorters.  (You can tell they are 'male' towels because of the other contents of the bag.)

And even as I applaud the generosity of those who are filling the donation bags, I am also aware of how much they must have if they are able to simply throw this stuff away (for if Ten Tons did not pick it up, it would all go to the landfill).  All that is donated will find its way into the hands of needy folks in Syracuse (and at no cost to them) and so it is well used.

At the same time, I wonder if those bags are really being filled with generosity when what you are giving is something you would have thrown away anyhow.  This is not giving 'out of our substance' - that is, this is not sacrificial giving, it is convenient giving.  Perhaps convenient giving is on the pathway to generosity of the heart, but I'm not so sure.

Thanks to all who worked, cooked and prayed for us.  Good work was done today. 
PW+