Yesterday was one of those days where meetings dominated the landscape. Helping one with funeral preparation, another with agonizing divorce, another and yet another session moved into the night. It seemed each meeting escalated in dramaticism with intense sobriety and need to walk wisely as a serpent and harmless as a dove.
While I don't relish the pain men and women encounter, I very much like such days. Yes, I suffer fatigue. Fatigue over schedules is maybe 10% of the load those with whom I met are carrying. Mine is the easy job.
What I treasure about yesterday is Memorial Drive is obviously such an authentic Place to Start Life Over that we actually draw people who.....need to start life over. The immediate innuendo to such a truth is "sticky wickets". One of our older members encountered a friend who attends another church in Tulsa. The friend said, "You know, Memorial Drive is nothing but a church for refugees" meaning to take a dig at our member....and us.
What a compliment to us. Yes, we are a refugee church. As far as I know each one of us is worthy of rejection....not only by God but by each other. Yet, we aren't rejected. We may have to sand and polish from time to time; but every person is valued highly.
For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think....Romans 12:3.
Ministry is sheer joy. Our job is not to think highly of self. Our responsibility is to think more highly of others for we all rejects starting life over in Jesus....the Life-Giver.
6 comments:
It is THE greatest work in the world! (I had "job" instead of work, but so often it doesn't even feel like a job, a privilege!)
Oh, may our churches become more like refugee camps and less like tombs.
I wish that ever church was a refugee church. There's actually LIFE in those churches.
Since a refugee is someone that is trying to escape danger or persecution, I would say it's a total compliment that we are called a refugee church.
At some point in our lives, are'nt we all trying to escape some type of danger or persecution? Even from Satan? What an honor that they would choose us and WE accept them with open arms.
Wow ... what a silly dig to make.
Very encouraging words, bro! Remember the "Rush rooms" that some restaurants had back in the early 90s? You could go to the restaurant and be seated in a room that broadcast the talk show host.
Well, I think it is time for a different kind of "Rush room"--one in which Terry's sermons are broadcast. I would do lunch at such a restaurant every day!
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