Hi there! Thank you for taking the time to read this week's edition of the EcclesiaGram. Yes, it's late . . . We expected to zap it out yesterday but life got in the way of those plans as you'll read below in Steve's talk of oatmeal, boilers and the Kingdom. We're excited this week about how close we're getting to meeting our funding goal for Our House (see note on left), not to mention the great opportunity to host our friends from Habitat. It's a real joy to have folks visit . . . we give thanks for what the Spirit brings.
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Members of Newburgh's Habitat for Humanity's board of directors spent much of Friday in the parlors here at Hope as they organized and strategized over their role in building a brighter future for Newburgh. Click here to read about this incredible organization which has already built nearly 70 homes and is now in year two of a its commitment to build 50 homes in five years. Amazing! We're thankful for our relationship with Habitat and for the ways in which we have been able to support one another over the years. |
Oatmeal, a boiler and the Kingdom of God
"Oatmeal," said Andy Vitek as we watched water dribbling from one of the steam boilers here at Hope yesterday morning. "Oatmeal? You meal the steel cut Irish type?" I asked. "Nope regular Quaker Oatmeal . . . that'll do it." I laughed of course. You would have laughed too if you had been down there in the basement watching water run out of the boiler and wondering how in the world we'd be able to keep the building heated while we went about ordering a new boiler, getting it installed and figuring out how to raise the money to pay for it, and someone you've know and trusted for years looks at you, smiles, and says, "Oatmeal." But, it makes sense if you think about it. Oatmeal has a way of becoming all pasty-like when it's cooked and, in its own way, has been known to clog up human plumbing . . . so why not a leak in a 500,000 BTU steam boiler? Andy was back on the scene a couple of hours later with a family size container of Quaker Oatmeal ("the steel cut is too expensive") which he poured into the boiler. Then he and Jeff Lockwood, who seems to know everything there is to know about heating systems, tightened up a fitting and fired 'er up. As the boiler began to make steam, the water dribble became a seep, pipes clanged and we were back in business. It was a lesson in expectations. I mean oatmeal is a food, something you'd have for breakfast, use in place of bread crumbs, or, use to make cookies. Sure, you might also use it to make soap or bath stuff, but boiler repair? I would never have thought of it. My view of oatmeal was limited. And, so it is with our view of others. We expect others to be a certain way, to do certain things, to be . . . the other. We apply those expectations to our relationships with others and miss out on fully appreciating and engaging with them. I tell you all of this because I think it relates to next week's gospel story - Matthew 5:21-27 . Read this passage and it sounds like Jesus is offering up something akin to the Ten Commandments on steroids, rules so impossible that we could never begin to live up to them. But, if you really sit with it, you might begin to see it as a description of what life might be like in the Kingdom of God, a way of being in which we practice loving God and one another, doing for others what we want them to do for us. It's not about suppressing negative thoughts or feelings. It's about transforming ourselves so that we see ourselves and others through the tender, loving eyes of God. It's about waking up to the reality that I need you to survive. How? By grace. |