"Knowing the correct password--saying "Master, Master,' for instance--isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience--doing what my Father wills. I can see it now--at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, "Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? "You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.'
I don't know about you but these words make me slow down and think about why I/we do what I/we do...
I am thinking about this in light of a meeting I went to yesterday with Sharon and Ingrid. It was the "Back to School Consortium" in Shoreline. There are 1899 children in the Shoreline School District that qualify for free or assistance lunch programs. In order to qualify you have to be living pretty close to or below the poverty line...Shoreline is a city with a population of 53k
This consortium is made up of people from the Center for Human Services, (a non-profit or down the street), family advocates from the school district and some volunteers that work with other low-income issues...
They plan a back to school event in August that includes school supplies, hair cuts, hygeine products, and clothes from the clothing bank as well as food and fun...
Last year they served 600 children and youth, this year the goal is 1000...
Needless to say they need a lot of donated items, money and volunteers...Costco gave them 600 backpacks...they are contacting businesses and churches to help...
This struck me...they have a complete database of churches in Shoreline, they called all of them over the past few weeks and not one church returned their call...
They asked us if we had any hints of how to get through to the churches...
They asked me if I knew of any quarterly or so meeting where all the pastors got together...I said I did not, that we have been in Shoreline one year and have never recieved an invitation (which doesn't mean it's not happening)...
One woman made a comment "wouldn't that be a powerful force"
This sent me spinning...churches, meeting together, maybe quarterly, pastors, leaders or anyone interested in seeing what needs are in the community and how we could join together to serve -- that would be a powerful force...I bet at the very minimum we could provide school supplies for 1000 kids that are in our Parish...
Back to the Lectio...Jesus help us to never use you to make us feel important, help us to go forward with the attitude of humility, which reminds me of the Paul's hymn in Philippians 2...
The church is the church only when it exists for others. . . . The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. . . . It must not underestimate the importance of human example which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus. http://www.cresourcei.org/kenosis.html
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