The “impossible possibility”

DAILY BYTE

Are you intimidated by the need you see in the world? We’re often intimidated by our own insufficiency and by the tasks we already have to do. So, we look at facing other peoples’ problems as well as our own deep paralyses as though they’re impossible to tackle. But, serving one another actually takes very little special gifting or circumstance on our part - we simply must be willing to get our hands dirty.

Being part of a loving, Christlike community is not an impossibility. It is what Letty Russell calls an “impossible possibility” - that God is in the process of fulfilling the unity of the church and mending everything that’s broken in us and in the world (Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference - page 68).

We all have something to offer this process, even if it’s just our hands joining together, as innocently unskilled or as arthritically gnarled as they are. All of our fingernails should have dirt under them, if we are going to become the kind of community that lifts people down to reach Jesus. Now, you probably won’t be required actually to carry someone on a mat, as the people in Mark 2 are... But, every community has its own types of mats.

I am a PK – a pastor’s kid. And when I was in high school, I remember telling my parents that I would almost become a minister just so that my children could be raised by the church like I was. For as long as I can remember, the grannies and grandpas and families of the church welcomed me into their own. Even when people disliked my mom’s policies or sermons, I was oblivious because of the shower of hugs that came my way at the end of every service.

One older lady in the church particularly stands out to me. I didn’t know her very well, but at my birth and every year of my life until she died, she wrote me a birthday card. It was an amazing reminder of being surrounded by a loving community. But, the more I have thought about it over the years, the more I have been slightly saddened by my childhood church celebrity because I don’t think every child in that church was given the same embrace that I was – and they should have been. Every person should be. Because of course, the result of such love is that we reciprocate it. We become a part of one another’s lives. The poet, Alfred Tennyson, wrote, “I am a part of all that I have met.”

Who are you a part of? Who do you have a connection with in the community?

Are you locked into a group that is so much like you that there is little challenge to grow? Are you new in a church, looking with wary eyes at all the unknown faces around you? Are you an older person who feels as though you have given all you have to give or you don’t have what others might need? Are you raising a young family, where your life is consumed by running around – so much so that it’s lonely and exhausting, and you could really do with someone else to cook dinner just this once...? Are you a young person, who secretly craves the hug or just the listening ear of someone who’s been around a few years more than you – someone who might have wisdom to get you through some of the most confusing times of your life.

Who is lifting you down to Jesus? Who might you be able to lift down to be near him, grounded and close to the one who made us and knows everything about our bodies and spirits so intimately that it takes but a word for him to heal us?

FOCUS TEXT

Mark 2:3-4 (The Message)

They brought a paraplegic to him, carried by four men. When they weren’t able to get in because of the crowd, they removed part of the roof and lowered the paraplegic on his stretcher.

PRAY AS YOU GO

God, you are a community in and of yourself. You are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Teach us to embrace and love one another, as you have loved us with all that you are. Amen.