“[Wisdom] is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
Those who hold her fast are called happy.” Proverbs 3.18
“…there is no place in you for my word.” John 8.37b
In the final chapter of The Centered Life, Jack Fortin tells how a group of church folks, lay and clergy, gathered together to “identify what is needed in congregations to help people connect Sunday with Monday to Saturday.” [1]
The group made a drawing that represented “the congregation in its present state. Then the same group created a drawing to illustrate their vision of how they would like to see the congregation’s presence in the world. You have them in front of you right now – which do you think is which?
The longer I do this pastoring business, the more I’m convinced that our God and our faith have been far too small for far too long. It could be that when we begin the journey of faith, God is one element within the many facets of the life we live – but if God remains just one part of our life for too long, everything else begins to crowd God out, until, finally, the words of Jesus become true: there is no longer a place within us for Jesus, God’s word.
I’ve had a little of that going on in me lately. I’m not experiencing the kind of faithful angst that Mother Theresa faced, but it’s somewhere around there. For whatever reason, God and I aren’t particularly close at the moment. I don't doubt or feel like I'm straying or anything like that, but at present it feels like a good friendship that has gone dormant for some reason. Maybe it's the parenting thing - I certainly don't have a lot of peaceful moments right now, and when I do I tend to sleep right through them. But our rootedness is coming in different ways in this new call, and I think we're still figuring them out, and part of figuring things out is figuring out where God is in all this newness in our lives.
Losing God’s presence is not an easy thing to experience on your own. You try to make time for God in the rest of your busy life, until you begin to feel stretched and out of sorts, like the rest of your life is pulling you away from God (or God is pulling you away from the rest of your life) and things just don’t fit right. This is why the ‘tree of life’ image on the right is so brilliantly done. If you look close, you’ll notice that the figure is actually lots of little people together in one body, and everything is a part of that body which bears fruit.
Part of our calling as the body of Christ is to live as the body which bears fruit for one another, and sometimes we keep each other going just by being here. One major change that’s coming in the church is a willingness to meet each other where we are broken, where we struggle, where we’re frustrated, and hang in there together, openly, vulnerable, able to give each other life simply by being here together. By sharing in each other’s joy and sorrow, love and remorse, we become vessels of the Spirit to each other, through whom the love of God becomes active and real, present in tangible ways throughout every waking and sleeping moment of our lives.
While I’ve been walking in this somewhat bewildering distance from God, I’ve been drawn into this fellowship of forgiven sinners and found a place of welcome. I may not be particularly close with the Father at the moment, but I do feel the presence of the Spirit of Life here, keeping me connected with the Father and the Son through the community of faith, and for that, I’m grateful. You’re being stretched at the moment – classes, papers, work, family and many other things are clamoring for your attention. But the tree of life that grounds you in faith isn’t one of the many voices calling for your attention – it’s the wisdom of the faith community, reminding you that you are grounded, centered and swept up into the everlasting love of God. I pray for your peace, as I know you pray for mine – God bless you all as you finish out the semester. Amen.
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