Sunday, June 01, 2008

This is a good place to be.

Sometimes it happens that you are able to stop your forward momentum just enough to look back and you see just how far you've come.

That's how it was for me in church this morning.

I looked out over the congregation as they came forward to share in communion and saw how far we've come. We have learned new ways of being healthy and have broken cycles of bad decisions that have ruled us in the past.

We are a community that really does care, for one another and for the world beyond our own walls.

The previous generation is moving into a time of decline and the next one has taken over the leadership and is determined to give good servant leadership and make good decisions for the church.

Many have received the opportunity to get healthier, emotionally and spiritually. And they have been transformed in personal ways that produce fruit and life for them. Even as I celebrate those who have moved towards health and life, I grieve over those who push against it. But there are less and less of them now.

They really have changed, and on mornings like today I look out with some sense of wonder.

I am full of gratitude for the individual stories of change, and how those individual stories have merged together to create this community dynamic, that gives losers and failures another chance. We have learned much of Grace and are acting less with dis-grace.

Are we perfect? No, not yet. I suppose we are all one big bad decision away from a real mess. But as we keep making the right small decisions along the way, it gets harder and harder to make the one really bad one that will mess up our lives so badly again. Moving towards health and grace.

This morning as I watched them I saw how far we've come, and I was thankful, and overwhelmed.

This is a good place to be.

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