News

From the Desktop of the Pastor – Week of the 7th Sunday after Pentecost

Hi everyone,

School’s out!  While I’ve been out of school for a long, long time, I am still excited that we are finally entering my kids’ summer break, especially now that 2 out of my 3 kids are in grade school now.  Summer brings a lot of things, mostly good.  More sleeping in, less whining about being tired. More time to be bored, less time of complaining about too much work.  More chances to play games and watch movies, less time to complain about how dad cannot help with school whatsoever (but mom can, of course).

Granted, my kids are in French Immersion and I barely passed the course in high school.  And when I do “read” to them in French (those quotation marks are very much intentional), I purposely read with such a horrible accent mostly to hide the fact that my French accent is, in fact, horrible.  Also, I tend to read to them in this horrible accent exactly when they do not ask me to read to them.  Actually, they tell me to stop but for some strange reason I just keep going (I think it is a dad thing).

So my kids don’t exactly trust me when it comes to school.  They know I can’t help them, so they go to who can, their mom.  But even then, they need to admit that they need help before she will or can.  They need to see where they might need the extra support, then react out and accept that support.  I guess it is a lesson in humility, that we can’t do everything by ourselves, and that dad is awful at French.

Here are the readings for next week:

Ezekiel 2:1-5
Psalm 123
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

It is hard to imagine that Jesus could be powerless.  With all the stories we read about the miracles, the authoritative teaching, and you know, the whole resurrection thing, it is almost unfathomable to hear that Jesus could “do no deed of power” just because he was among those he grew up with.

But then, if I think about it, we are seen differently by those we grew up with, aren’t we?  We are regarded differently with our siblings, our families of origin, our childhood buddies.  We can’t ever think that “so and so is all grown up” because we’d always see “so and so” as that little kid that we know them as.

So I wonder then if Jesus’ powerlessness in his hometown isn’t so much just a hometown thing, but a humility thing.  That the people that watched Jesus grow up thought they were better than him, so much that they took offense in Jesus’ teaching, that they couldn’t even accept the help that he was giving.

See we can’t receive help if we don’t think we need help.  At least, we wouldn’t recognise the help that we’d be receiving.  It takes humility to admit weakness, to accept help, and to recognize that help can be given from someone who we might not have previously thought could help us.

Thankfully, we all belong to a community that is willing to help.  We belong to a God who is ever-present in our times of need.  We are saved by a Saviour who welcomes us into his gracious arms of love, filling us where we are empty, healing us where we are broken, strengthening us where we are weak.  We just might not always recognise it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening.

Thanks be to God!  That God’s love for us doesn’t depend on who we are, where we are from, or what we’ve done.  Rather, God’s love for us is strong and constant and unending.

Have a great week everyone!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.