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Tuesday, November 20, 2007
With Eternity's Values In View
Isaiah 12:1-6; Luke 21:1-8
On Sunday morning, I just had to talk in my sermon about Saturday morning's Presbytery meeting. I brought in everything from the weather to the worship, to starving pastors, to an all too brief conversation. All those pieces fit together so well, you'd think God had something to do with it.
The weather: Fog so heavy in the air that I walked a long block through a soft spray of mist all the way back to my car.
The worship: Glorious music (there's nothing quite like a couple hundred ministers and elders singing their hearts out!); good gospel words from the guest preacher; a soul-stirring hour together with God and with each other.
The starving pastors: The offering went to two special funds that supply grants to ministers and churches when financial emergencies threaten a pastor's pocketbook; we gave gladly and generously, grateful for our own relative bounty.
The conversation: My friend and colleague, Rev. Glenda Hope of San Francisco Network Ministries, thanked me (again!) for our suburban church's timely help years ago to a new graduate from their outreach to prostitutes who want to re-enter mainstream life; the punchline was that the woman now has a key staff position in the ministry that turned her life around way back then!
When Glenda began her "thank you" comments (again), I instinctively wanted to say, "Well gee, we really didn't do that much." But that's not so. What we did was have a couple of deacons step up with some money, some savvy, and some sanctified errand running, to make sure the woman and her kids had the bare necessities for a good new life. As Thanksgiving and Christmas approached. Our modest help gave that little family some stability, some hope, some strength to take the next steps into their good new future.
This jumble of Saturday impressions fed nicely into my Sunday sermon. About Jesus' praise for a woman he noticed at the Temple, whose modest offering far outweighed all the other offerings combined that day. What she put in the plate was two of the smallest coins in existence. What she gave in that offering turned out to be everything she had.
Still curious about how my monkey mind put all those pieces together?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:38 PM
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