For almost ten years I served as a Sunday school teacher at a large church teaching singles and young adults from ages 20 something to mid forties and up. I’d read the Bible and taught many lessons but this lesson hit me like a load of bricks. It the book of James it talks about the essence of pure religion being about the visits of widows and orphans. It bothered me that I didn’t understand why that could be, what’s so special about widows and orphans anyway? About a year later, I was serving in a role that required me to administer pastoral responsibilities for a group of 200 or more singles the church had a tradition of doing summer service projects and I still had this widow an orphan thing on my brain. Each pastor got to pick a service project, so I picked serving widows and honoring the elderly because it was the essence of pure religion. The widow and orphan are peoples that need the help of others more than most, so it looks like God wants us to have a significant other orientation in our walk with him. At that time in my life, in order to do something in my role, it required me to get my personal right and start investing time with my Grandmother who’d been placed in a local nursing home.
Last week, my dad had back surgery. His attitude towards these kind of things was about like working on another motorcycle project. I offered to go visit him in Athens and he said don’t come, I’ll be home soon. Sunday, I made my trip. He really sounded bad the day I’d called. I love my dad and funds have been kind of tight and it cost about $25 in gas to go see him. That’s food for a week right now as we prepare for Folk Fest. I made the trip and wow, it was so sweet. He was up working in the shop instead of at the house, he was moving around and full of joy. Not ten minutes after I arrived, my step-brother, step-sister, her husband and the Skylar showed adding to a warm sense of family in the homplace that I have not experience with my dad, well ever. Me being the industrious art revolutionary that I am, the car was packed with art projects that needed technical experience. Everyone of them was solved by talking to my family. I love it! God provides when we depend on him and take him at his word and adding so much to the quality of our life. Indeed it is a beautiful creation what God is doing with those who respond to the true creator with their creativity. And this my friends is good FrogShway.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I’ve recently re-encountered the most important thing that I think all humans desire…to be loved. I spoke with some friends today about how in our busyness of “doing” we can miss the act of just loving people. Visiting with them, talking to them, in whatever way we can to connect with people where they are is showing love to others. Precious memories are made in the process and that’s the blessing back to the one who loves!
Synchronicity, openness to the moment, “let life happen to me, just as I happen to it.” If you listen to critiques of writers, you often hear that the writer has hit home if he/she speaks from his/her actual life experience, writing about the people and places and activities that are rooted in experience. Family has purpose, and we are each born into a unique network of family-ness. It’s up to us how to play within the box of what we have been given. Remembering of course that it’s a cardboard box and we have the ability to cut, expand, transpose with our own hands.
Well, yes I agree…an ideal Sunday afternoon is spent visiting either my Dad in Winder, GA or visiting my favorite neighbors…we have such a great neighborhood…but when stress arrives it’s easy to forget that others are not where you are and feeling your same weight of thoughts at the moment. How is it that you find yourself keeping this mindset at your forefront?
LOVE should always be ON…and why is it that we get so ‘busy’ … is it not the tactic of the EVIL one to take us OFF course in the pattern of frenZy?