From the Field into the Choir: Remembering Grandpap

“Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.”  Psalm 104:23

I have an image of my grandfather fixed in my mind.  If I also live to be 88, I expect it is how I will remember him.  He is headed out to a day’s work, dressed in a tattered red hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans streaked with brown, clothes that even after careful washing smell partly sweet like silage and partly pungent like something else.  He walks with a determined stride and a broad grin, and he’s whistling, “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon.”

Why wouldn’t he be whistling and smiling?  He was going to work.  And Grandpap loved to work, found it deeply satisfying.  He pursued his work with the intensity that some men reserve for pleasures that are far less healthy and useful. 

He was able to work each day in a place that he had always known and loved.  My grandfather was born in the house where he would eventually die, even in the same room.  He learned about crops and cattle from his father, and spent decades tilling the fields he had wandered as a boy.  He loved these pastures and crop fields, because they contained the story of his life. 

For Meditation: "to live a perpetual Sabbath"

"For me personally, talking about God's work and God's rest and about humanity being made in God's image raises another question.  My wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis.  She was able to have children, and we brought them up, and she worked as a psychiatrist, but eventually had to abandon her work.  She now cannot move at all, hardly even to raise an eyebrow.  She cannot do anything for herself or speak.  Is she still a person in the image of God?  Living with Genesis 1 and with Ann's increasing disability leaves me with several reflections.  Because handicapped people are indeed human beings made in God's image, the rest of the world owes it to them to seek to make it feasible for them to have as much control over their lives as possible.  We should help them master as much of the world as possible rather than take over and run their lives for them.  But a kind of converse is that handicapped people remind the rest of us that being unable to work or even to do much of anything turns out not to mean you stop being human. Ann is obliged to live a perpetual Sabbath.  It is not merely work that defines the person."
John Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone, Part One, 25-26.

Rejoicing and Responding: Thoughts on the Sunday Collection

From The WORD of St. Timothy's, Herndon, November 2015.

“Then the people rejoiced because they had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered freely to the Lord.” I Chron. 29:9.

I’m so grateful to Bob Kimmel, Sean Kenis and Elaine Horsfield for reflecting on Christian stewardship in such thoughtful and compelling way in the lead up to our Consecration Sunday celebration.  Though as I write the big event hasn’t yet arrived, there really seems to be excitement throughout the congregation about focusing on this part of our spiritual life.  A number of you have come to thank me for talking directly about the importance of giving.  Others have stopped by my office to share why financial support of the church is such an important part of how you practice your faith. 

Opening up the topic in this way has also led to some helpful questions.  One of our head ushers, Jim Wallis, mentioned a concern to me about the fact that people who make their donations electronically don’t have anything to put in the plate on Sunday mornings.  Their gifts, also, he noted aren’t blessed as part of our worship service.  Should we do something about this, he wondered.