Pastor's Message
November 2009
To the Children of God:
Theresa of Lisieux once reflected on life by stating:
The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy.
It depends upon the way we occupy that place.
Some of the significant festivals of the church year begin with November. The church year begins all over soon and Emmanuel celebrates its last 150th Anniversary event. Thanksgiving approaches as well. The older I get the faster holy days, holidays, and birthdays seem to come. Where did those long boring days of summer go when I was of elementary age? I suspect that they went with my youth.
The older I get, and the closer to my last breath, I find that I am thinking about life differently. I wonder some nights not about what will be left behind, but what I will leave behind. I am not talking about money, property or even family. I am not talking about the words people may say about me before my casket. (It really won’t matter one way or the other what is said about me at that point.) I am talking about leaving behind something a bit richer that reflects God’s presence in the world. Will I have used the gifts bestowed upon me by God to enrich the world or will I have taken enough that I depleted it.
There is a story I found once in one of my devotions some years ago. It is a story about a great banquet put on by a mighty ruler. It goes like this:
A king invited his subjects to a banquet. The people of the kingdom were asked to bring a flask of wine as a sign of their solidarity and sharing. As they came into the area designated for the banquet each person was asked to poor their flask of wine into a common wine vat. When it came time for the wine everyone was given an old clay cup of the wine drawn from the large vat. None of them were ready for the taste of the wine. It was pure water. It seems that each person that came to the banquet thought: “My flask of wine is so small that if I fill it with water and pour it into the common vat, no one will be the wiser.” In the end no one was blessed by the tiny act each had done.
I believe that individuals and communities of faith need to wonder what will be left behind when they come to their end. What have we poured into our world? In what way have we occupied our place in the world?
One of Christ’s servants,
Pastor David A. Hendricks - Child of God