Of Forks and Relationships

I found them in the car, in the center console where they had been since that day.  My wife, Jean, and I had visited a member in another community and were too full from lunch to have a piece of pie, so we decided to take one to go.  On the way home the food had settled and I stopped at a convenience store and got some plastic forks and napkins, and we went to the city park and shared the pie.  So the other day as I was cleaning the car I came across the forks, but I left them for another day and another time in some park in some small town. 

Jean often says, “just surprise me”, whether it is where we might go to eat or what we do on vacation. 

We too often become creatures of habit, doing the same things over and over again, in the same way.  Some habits and routines are okay and good to have.  But sometimes doing things in a new way helps us see things in a new perspective.  One of our members last Sunday was sitting in a different place in worship and I went up and asked her if she was feeling alright.  Not really, but I did ask her about sitting in a different place, to which she responded, she thought she would get a different perspective on things.  Jesus invites us to see things from a new perspective.  Jesus invites us to see things often as God sees things.  Jesus uses powerful images of unlikely people to speak about God and God’s grace and love.  Again and again we see it in the gospel narratives: a Samaritan woman at a well, a widow and her mite, a prodigal son and his loving father, a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to go look for one lost lamb, and so many others. 

Sometimes we get set in our ways, we get in ruts and ride the ruts until it is quite difficult to get out of them.  It is true of people, communities, churches, and all kinds of institutions.  It not only can be difficult to get out of our ruts it can be difficult to see life outside of the ruts.  Our relationships can become that way.  Sometimes we find our relationships are suffering because they have become predictable and centered so much on ourselves that we fail to see the other person from a new and healthy perspective.  Look at things from a different perspective and act in a new way.  

The secrets to a great marriage:  forks in the center console and pie in the park; surprise each other; and sit in a different pew (see things from a new perspective).   

First steps

Our little Zoe has started waking.  After a few hesitant attempts at standing she took two stumbling steps before falling.  It was not long before she tried again and this time managed three steps.  In the course of a week she was able to master the process and now can walk just about as far as she cares to, which is usually the length of the living room.  At the end of every tiny journey she gives herself a round of applause and smiles up at us, knowing that we are rooting for her.  It is a big week for first steps in the Vickers house.  Autumn is also starting Kindergarten.  She is excited and I know will do much better than I did.  She is more of a go-getter than I am.  It is a time of joyful new beginnings.

These days make me wonder at the awesome fact that Jesus taught us to call God "Father."  I believe that Jesus gave us that name for God knowing that we would fill our thoughts of God with all the good things that name can conjur.  Since God has so chosen to name himself as something so close to our experience, then surely even as I look down at little Zoe, He is looking down on us all.  Our own hesitant and stumbling attempts at righteousness are under the watchful gaze of not a hateful judge, but a loving Father.  I am so  glad these days that Jesus taught us to pray to God our Father.  It makes it easier to get up and try again knowing who is looking down on me. 

Pastor Phil