A Story to Tell

Last week Jake and I went to see my mom, who is in the middle of a battle with cancer. We had a great time visiting my mom and she just completed her second round of chemo and is looking forward to a break.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to catch up with some friends from high school. My mom said that we could visit for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening, but she would be too tired to visit for the whole day. So we had some time to run around. We went into DC and like I said, I got together with my high school friends. I had not seen them for 25 years and I was nervous to see them. I don' know what your high school experience was like, but I have a suspicion it was like mine. I felt like I had no friends, I felt like I was always on the outside looking in, I felt like everyone else had it figured out, had it together, and I was lost.

I decided that I would go to this gathering despite my nervousness. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had. Everyone was thrilled to see me, which is always nice, and wanted to know what life was like. I was surprised by it all and came away so happy that I went.

I think the most surprising part of my time was a conversation that I had with a friend. She was, like so many of us, a regular high school student. She was not particularly popular or unpopular; she had friends and activities that she was involved in. I asked her if she was married or had kids. She said that when she was in high school her father was very ill. It fell to her all through high school to take care of her dad and her little brothers. She was in charge of the laundry, cooking cleaning. When she finished high school she was responsible to take care of her household. What an amazing amount of pressure, of responsibility. The thing is that I never knew any of this, and that is the point.

So many of us live our lives so self absorbed with our own dialogue, that we miss the reality that those around us have real problems and real struggles. We are so busy worrying about ourselves that we totally miss that those around us need our help, our love and our compassion.

I left the conversation in awe of this strong woman who at the age of 16 was running a household, taking care of a sick adult man, and raising two preteen boys. At the same time that I was learning to drive, worrying about who liked me and who did not like me, she was paying bills and wondering if there was enough money to make it through next week.

We have been looking at worship when we gather together on Sundays. I think that one of the things worship does is allow us to get our eyes off of ourselves and on to God. It provides balance to our lives that otherwise would be all about self. It helps us get our eyes on God so that we can love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Worship of God gets us to look at God, be in His presence and be transformed.

I am hopeful for our church community as we long to be a community learning from Jesus to seek justice, love and serve others and walk humbly with God. I am hopeful, because we are learning to worship. As we learn to worship and we look at God and not ourselves, we are then able to see people as God sees them.

Peace

Edwin