Distance

When a relationship is struggling people may use the word distance to describe what is happing.  Even when the two are side by side, it can seem as if a great gulf is between them.  That kind of distance is a great tragedy, but it can be resolved.  Through patience, deliberate communication, forgiveness, and prayer those imagined distances can be traversed and relationship can be revived. 

There is a flip side to this dynamic, and just as the first is a great tragedy its converse is one of the greatest joys of life.  It is a fact that there are some people who are so precious to us that no physical distance can change how we feel toward them.  As I am fond of saying in sermons, the Lord blesses us with the gift of each other.  As we go about our daily tasks we do things that remind us of them.  A song, a restaurant, the echo of our friend in the voice of another, and a thousand other minutia can make our loved ones as present to us as if they were standing right beside us still.  As I sit here in Hutchinson Kansas I am aware of people I love in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Mississippi, and of course right here in my own town.  They are the people who have helped to make me who I am.  We do not live this life alone, but rather we only know ourselves as we know each other.  I can sit here physically alone, and yet not alone at all. 

It is comforting on this anniversary of a great tragedy for our country to remember that despite any distance, even the distance between life and death, that we are all connected in a holy bond.  We are gathered together spiritually into one body from which nothing in heaven or earth can separate us.  We may of course still feel alone at times.  We may miss those who have gone on before us.  But in Jesus all distance is temporary, and in that knowledge we give thanks for Him and for those we love who, for whatever reason, are not by our sides at the moment.  We are united in Christ.  More than any dogma or doctrine, this is the mark of who we are. 

 

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

John 13:35

 

 

Pr. Phil

The State Fair

The State Fair is at hand.  The State Fair is an event that for 10 days comes into our lives and our community with sights and sounds, tastes and smells.  What is your favorite place at the Fair?  I have those regular places I go.  I go to see the biggest pumpkin and watermelon and other exhibits in the Pride of Kansas Building.  I go to the Domestic Arts Building to see the beautiful quilts and handwork that are such works of art; the ladies of the congregations that I have served who love to quilt would be proud of me.  While in the Domestic Arts Building I also check out the cakes and other baked items, such creativity, and all I can say is that it is a good thing they are behind glass.  There are so many other things, new born animals, large fish and snakes, and all the rest.  I see lots of people I know.  I see members of my congregation, people I know from the community that our paths just don’t cross often enough, and I meet new people every year. 

I encounter God at the State Fair.  God is in the people that come, the gifted exhibitors who have been  blessed with wonderful talents, in those who care for and show animals and those who man exhibits inviting us to learn, understand, and grow.   God is in us, the residents of this community that welcome the State and beyond to our hometown.  And every evening that I am there I just like to sit there by where the train stops and the kids play in the water that squirts up from the sidewalks, and I like to breath deep and watch the people and listen and realize the God can even be at the Kansas State Fair.     

Pr. Tim