Author: Pastor Jeff Smith

It’s about time. That phrase has come to our lips more frequently in the last few days than we could ever have imagined. Mom is dying, and as of this writing, my sister and I have accounted for more than 175 combined hours during the past week keeping vigil by her bedside. Mom lost consciousness completely three days ago, and we (along with the entire family) have said “goodbye” in as many ways as we know how. All that is left to do is wait … remind her of our love and how well she did as a mom … and then wait some more. All the while silently whispering, “It’s about time.”

To the outsider, it looks like we are wasting time. We are sitting and reading and talking and writing and moving to the bedside from time to time to see if mom hurts and then remind her once again that she is loved. Sometimes we sit in silence; at other times, we nap. It is time wasted to those who don’t understand, but it is what it means to live in God’s time … especially when the waiting happens in the context of love and faith. It’s about time.

Last week, my personal coach, Don Eisenhauer, was here to lead a training on Coaching at End of Life at Wellspring, and it was then that mom first became unresponsive (no, the irony doesn’t escape me). It was during that training that he reminded me what a privilege it is to walk with the dying to the doorway of eternity. It’s an even greater privilege when it is my own mom. And all that is needed is presence … the gift of time spent keeping vigil … spending our time … wasting our time on the sacred. It’s about time.

Of all the gifts with which I have been blessed, there is perhaps none greater than the gift of time. Yet we are not always good stewards of our time. Stop and think about the time we have spent with our families in contrast with the time we have spent with our faces stuck in a screen (and I number among the guilty on that charge) … the time spent holding the hands of those who suffer in contrast with the time we spend gratifying our own desires … the time spent mentoring a child in need in contrast with time spent being “busy” doing “more important things” … or perhaps most significantly, time spent alone with God in contrast to the time we spend chasing after things that might bring momentary joy, yet which have little to do with the eternal. Time is the greatest gift God has given us. When we don’t know what else to give each other, let us not overlook the greatest gift … the gift of our time. It’s about time.

I am blessed by a church family, a tremendous staff and a host of friends who understand the value of my time and that, right now, my time is best used to keep watch … to sit and wait for the inevitability of death. In due time, we will have glimpsed beyond the door of eternity where everything is measured only in God’s time. And then I will have learned once more … it’s about time.

It has become clear to me over the years that perhaps there is nothing as important as relationships. In our worship at Wellspring, we concluded the theme of building on trust and looking at the life of Moses up through the giving of the law. It occurred to me this week that everything about the law is about relationships … whether it is our relationship with God or with one another.

Humans simply don’t exist without relationship. I suppose some people try to journey through life alone, but I would suggest that their lives aren’t as rich and fulfilling as those who live fully in relationship with others. Perhaps it would be better said that we don’t exist well without relationship. Relationships are what have molded me and shaped me over the years.  In the grand scheme of ideas that enter my brain (including this one), it occurs to me that none of my ideas are entirely my own. They have been crafted out of much dialogue and interaction with people who have both agreed and disagreed with what I think.

Life itself is dependent upon relationship. Even animal species that tend toward isolation from one another must be in relationship for their species to survive. Many animals live in herds for protection and propagation. In our world, we call that “living in community.” Community is the essence of human life, and life outside community is sterile and meaningless.

So as difficult as relationships can sometimes be, relationships are still the essence of our being. My challenge for you is to find ways to strengthen your relationships. My challenge is to start with our relationship with God. What can we do to strengthen that relationship and then work from there to relationships within our family … our community … our world?

For the life of me, I just can’t think of anything more important than relationships!

After my daughter and her family moved to Hawaii, I was charged with a task. I have had the privilege (through the first week of October) to keep her puppy, who is under vet care to avoid the quarantine customary for pets moving to the Hawaiian islands. This “puppy,” however, is a 100 pound Rottweiler named Daisy. Daisy is a lovable, playful dog, and it is because of her that I have come to have a new appreciation for commandments.

Daisy, you see, is trained and is incredibly smart. She is very capable of heeding commands, but she also has impulse control issues. Maybe that’s why I love her so much and why our daughter thought it was such a good idea that I get the honor of caring for her … I know the commandments, yet I have impulse control issues, as well. Commandments don’t come easy for me. I usually want to do things my way. I am prone to rebellion, and like Daisy, I am prone to do things that can get me in trouble.

Like Daisy, as well, I can feel guilty. When I came in and found a box torn up in the den, all it took was the simple question, “What did you do?” to send Daisy under the table with her nub as low as it could go. When I fail (which is much more often than I would like to admit), I usually am looking for a table to be under when I sense God asking me, “What did you do?”

But the good thing about the commandments of God is that they are designed for my well-being and to bring me to a new place in my relationship with God and with my brothers and sisters in God’s world. Instead of thinking about commandments as being those things that constrain me, I have learned to see the commandments of God as the gifts that free me to be the child of God I was created to be.

Michelangelo, the great sculptor and artist of the 16th century, is perhaps best known for things such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his sculpture of David (along with many other works). In sculpting, the quote that is attributed to Michelangelo is that

every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

I think perhaps this is how I have come to view the commandments. Whether we are talking about the 10 commandments of Exodus and Deuteronomy or whether we are talking about Jesus’s recitation of the great commandments (as found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) to love God and one another, I have come to see the commandments as God’s sculpting of my life to be the child of God I was created to be. And the other part of that reality is the realization that God loved me enough to sculpt that life just for me. God looked at the block of stone that is my life … my sin … my impulsive behavior … my inability to see others as God sees them … and is working to cut away everything that is not my authentic, God-given self.

Yes, commandments are hard. Just like the lovable granddog, I am learning more about commandments each day. But my prayer of thanksgiving is that God loves me through each step as I follow the commandments to love as God loves us!

Live in Grace!

Jesus replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

We are currently in a sermon series at Wellspring that is about a journey that is built entirely on trust. It is the journey of the children of Israel delivered from Egypt and moving toward the land of promise. It is the story of Moses’s call, the deliverance of God’s people from Pharaoh’s oppressive hand, and the journey that follows. It is finally a story about a sacred relationship between the people of God and the God who loves them and has called them.

As we gather for one combined service this week, we will be gathering at tables as we recall the sacred meal of Jesus that is based upon the passover feast. We will be hearing about Moses and the plagues, and we will remember the night of the first passover. This is when the people of Israel were instructed to put lamb’s blood on the door posts and the header over the top of the door, and with that, the angel of death that came to take the first-born from every household passed over the houses marked with lamb’s blood.

While this ancient way of thinking about blood and sacrifice are foreign (if not repugnant) to us, the idea of blood for sacrifice and deliverance made their way into the life of Christ. Jesus was faced with the understanding that blood was required for people to be saved … to be passed over by death … and in order to shut the door finally on death, Jesus offered his own blood that we might be saved. This image brings to mind a God whom we do not understand or necessarily worship today. After all, a God who is love surely would not demand a blood sacrifice just to be appeased.

But there is another angle on this that I want to explore. And this new understanding is based upon what the ancients believed about blood.

We have a very scientific view of what blood is and how it contributes to biological life. Blood is the vehicle that carries nutrients to the muscles and tissues throughout the body. Blood is the vehicle that cleanses the body of impurities and delivers those impurities to the liver and the kidneys to be filtered out. Blood is essential to our biological life.

To the ancients, who did not have a scientific understanding about the nature of blood, however, blood was quite simply … LIFE! They understood, as do we, that when blood leaves the body, the body dies. What that meant for them was that the essence of life was in the blood itself. When we bleed, we are pouring our life out of our bodies.

It is with this understanding that I have come to understand the nature of the sacrifice of Jesus. My understanding of the death of Jesus wasn’t that it was necessary in order to appease some sadistic, blood-starved deity; rather, the death of Jesus was necessary in order to share the gift of his life with us. The sacrifice of Jesus is itself the sharing of life and the invitation to share in life that is more than just living and breathing.

The life to which we are called is to be lived wholly in God. It is a life where we live in sacred relationship … covenant … with God and with one another. It is a life that is abundant and eternal. And it is made possible because Jesus gave his own blood … his own life … as a gift to us.

So as we hear the story of the Passover and the deliverance of the children of Israel … the people of the first covenant … I pray that we will consider how the blood of Christ … the life of Christ … is offered at our own doorposts. That is the covenant of blood that brings us abundant life. Stop and take a look … does the life of Christ adorn the doorpost of your own life? When it does, you will experience the sweetness of deliverance and the joy of a life lived in love!

Recently, we read in Genesis 32 the story of Jacob wrestling with God. It was in that story that we hear that Jacob has been given the name Israel. While we focused on a deeper theme in the story, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about names.

Our grandchildren are 13 months old and 10 months old, and they are at that age where speech is just beginning to take shape. While all of the grandparents have been using grandparent names, only our granddaughter’s paternal grandparents have other grandchildren who have called them by their names. Our grandson is the first grandchild for all of his grandparents, so we are not exactly sure what our grandparent names will be!

The reality we learned from watching our own children grow up is that they accept the adult prompt for grandparents’ names only some of the time. And even when they do accept the prompt to call grandparents a specific name, there is still nothing quite like hearing your name spoken by that little voice just learning language.

Then there are nicknames … typically given us by people we love, as well. When our children were very small, our daughter, Layne, had trouble saying her older brother’s name. When she couldn’t say “Philip,” she called him “Phuppy,” which the family still calls him from time to time. A name given by a little sister instead of a parent is just as meaningful.

Our son-in-law, Jeff, is an air force pilot, and we learned early on that his call sign is given to him just when we finishes the basic course for his particular aircraft. It can only be given to him by experienced pilots who are his instructors. It’s a sacred rite of passage for a pilot to be given his call sign.

Earlier in my ministry, I learned a good deal of American Sign Language, and when asked my sign name, it had to be a name given to me by a deaf person. I had all sorts of lofty signs for myself that had to do with my calling and position as a pastor, but when my deaf friends gave me my name, it had only to do with my beard by forming a J around the lower part of the chin. While I might have been momentarily disappointed, there is nothing quite like being given your sign name by deaf friends.

Our name … our real name … is always something that is given to us. It is not something we give ourselves. Yes, I know of people who didn’t like their name and who had it legally changed. I know of celebrities who have chosen stage names that sound better on marquees than the names given them. But when it comes down to it, those who love us most still know us for the names we have been given.

Which brings us back to the story from Genesis! We are people who have all kinds of names for ourselves. Some of those names are negative names based upon our poor self-images and low self-esteem. Some of those names are little more than propaganda as we attempt to mold more positive, sometimes false, images we want others to see.

In our contemporary worship service, we sang “Hello, My Name Is” on the Sunday we read that story, and it came as a reminder that we may have many names, but the our real name is “child of the one true king.” As I’ve reflected more and more upon my name, I have come to the realization that the only name that matters is “child of God.” The name God gives me will never be taken away, and that’s the name that brings we hope … of course, I am still a little excited about what Mason or Mackenzie will call me in the coming months!

So as you go about your daily lives, pause just a moment to reflect upon your name. Think about how people who love you most say your given name (or perhaps a nickname). Remember that, no matter what you are called or think you should be called, you will always be a child of God. Remember your name … remember who you are!

Sunday is Pentecost, and we celebrate the birthday of the church! It is an exciting time as we recount the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit. We celebrate the gift of translation as the apostles spoke while people from lands far and wide heard the good news being proclaimed in their own native tongue. We will celebrate the essential unity of the church and the gifts bestowed upon its members that bring power and vitality to the body as a whole.

There is one element, however, that is absolutely essential to adequately understanding the revolutionary nature of Pentecost. That element is inclusiveness. When we stop and think about the various people listed in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we are struck by the varied (sometimes complicated) names listed:

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia belong to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.

It would seem obvious that the lines could easily have been drawn between us and them! What if someone who was a Pamphylian was normally considered an outcast and unwelcome in Cappadocia? The relationship between Arabs and Judeans then was not much better than it is today, so I’m pretty sure there would have been strains in the relationship between these people. My guess is that some of these people would have been no more than cordial to each other at best, and at worst, they would have been outright hostile toward the people they considered “them.”

My point is that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift that breaks down barriers and looks beyond differences. It is the gift of inclusion that says to everybody out there … everybody … that they are loved by God and invited to be part of this Body of Christ.

We are currently having a struggle in the United Methodist Church over the issue of inclusion of people belonging to the LBGTQ community, and it is tearing at the very fabric that defines us as “united.” We are struggling with what some consider to be moral choice when others (including me), believe that we are talking about essential differences in the way God made us. The stand we have taken for several years is that members of the LBGTQ community are “people of sacred worth” but their lives are somehow “incompatible with Christian teaching.” I wonder if being Phrygian might have been incompatible with Christian teaching early in the history of our faith.

My point is that the things we use to differentiate between “us” and “them” are somehow irrelevant to the Holy Spirit. The power of Pentecost is the power to take the message beyond our dividing lines and open the church to people of all ages, nations and races … to people who are gay and straight … to people who speak languages we don’t understand. It is the power to unite us regardless of what divides us.

The joy of serving Wellspring is the joy of living daily with the motto that has been part of this church from its founding:  “All are welcome! All are accepted!” And then someone a few years ago added the tagline, “All means all!” So as I celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, I celebrate our diversity … the many ways God made and gifted each of us! My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will overtake all Christians everywhere that we might truly be a church where “all means all.”

To see the option that I endorse as a pathway for the UMC in this debate, please visit A Way Forward, and please sign according to the instructions if you agree that this is a positive step in addressing this challenge.

I remember a saying that my parents used to tell me when I was slow in getting ready to leave the house. When everyone would be getting into the car to leave, my mom or dad would call out to me and say, “Get a move on! Time is of the essence.” I grew up knowing that some things were essential to life, and one of those essential things was time itself.

On the Sunday known to much of the church as Ascension Sunday, we celebrate the story of Christ’s ascension into heaven following the glory of the resurrection. In Luke 24, Jesus tells the disciples that they are to proclaim to all nations what they have witnessed in his life, death and resurrection, but in almost the same breath they are told to “stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power.” (Luke 24:49b, CEB) Then he leads them out to Bethany and lifts his hands to bless them as he is then carried up into heaven. Luke then tells us that “they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem overwhelmed with joy. And they were continuously in the temple praising God.”

But you see, I am an American Christian born in a culture that doesn’t really value sitting around very much. It doesn’t matter that we are worshipping God. We are people who expect to be busy; otherwise, we are just wasting time. But this time is God’s time, and it is time that is, in my mind, essential.

When I was in seminary, I took a course on what turned out to be less than 50 pages of a massive work by the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, and the course was based on Barth’s “anthropology of time.” It was an effort to theologically reconcile time that is eternal and human time. In some sense, it is a Christian understanding of the difference between what the Greeks called chronos and kairos. Chronos is the root word of our word chronological. It is sequential time that marks our hours that turn to days that turn to years. It is the time that defines the beginning and the end of our lives. Kairos, on the other hand, is time that is eternal, what Barth referred to as the moment of salvation that exists above our time and, in some sense, occurs in every moment of our chronological time. One of my colleagues refers to it as the reality that Jesus dies for our salvation in every minute of every day of every year.

One of my favorite spiritual writers is Henri Nouwen, who in his book written largely for clergy and people who serve in church leadership, The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ, writes that every time we suffer in this human life, we have an opportunity to connect more closely with the Christ who suffered for us.  He writes:

By connecting the human story with the story of the suffering servant, we rescue our history from its fatalistic chain and allow our time to be converted from chronos into kairos, from a series of randomly organized incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity to explore God’s work in our lives.

So the question we will explore on Ascension Sunday is simply this: when did time stand still for you? 

I remember when I fell in love with Leah. We were teenage sweethearts, and I was glad that I had the opportunity to spend that first summer working for her father – it was the one job I would always show up for because it would keep me close to the one I loved. Looking back, if I had had a job anywhere else, I would have likely been fired because I am not sure I would have ever been on time.

When your heart is captured by someone or something, you live life in kairos. That was a period in my life when time stood still and chronological time had little meaning for me.

So kairos is where we find the disciples waiting. To people who don’t understand, it may seem that they are just wasting time … being useless … being lazy … but in fact they are doing what Jesus said to do. Wait!

Nouwen writes to ministers and others in the church that we must be careful not to fall into that trap:

It is in the intimacy with God that we develop a greater intimacy with people and it is in the silence and solitude of prayer that we indeed can touch the heart of the human suffering to which we want to minister. Do we really believe this? It often seems that our professional busy-ness has claimed the better part of us. It remains hard for us to leave our people, our job, and the hectic places where we are needed, in order to be with him from whom all good things come. Still, it is in the silence and solitude of prayer that the minister becomes minister. There we remember that if anything worthwhile happens at all it is God’s work and not ours.

Prayer is not a way of being busy with God instead of with people. In fact, it unmasks the illusion of busy-ness, usefulness, and indispensability. It is a way of being empty and useless in the presence of God and so of proclaiming our basic belief that all is grace and nothing is simply the result of hard work. Indeed, wasting time for God is an act of ministry, because it reminds us and our people that God is free to touch anyone regardless of our well-meant efforts. Prayer as an articulate way of being useless in the face of God brings a smile to all we do and creates humor in the midst of our occupations and preoccupations.

The challenge before the disciples after Jesus’ ascension, therefore, is not to just wait and talk about anything. It is not to fill up their days with idle nonsense. Though it hurts sometimes for me to say this, it was not given as a chance to get in a few rounds of golf before the busy work of the church began after the Holy Spirit came with their new assignments.

No, the challenge before the followers of Jesus was to empty themselves before God that they might be filled when the Spirit came. It became for them a time when time itself stood still. When has time stood still for you? When will it again?

This is the time of year when we begin to wax poetic about mothers … specifically, our mothers. For some of us, reflecting upon mom is to reflect upon her sacrifice and the hard work she put forth in caring for our family and in raising us. For others of us, our moms may have been less than stellar or even absent mothers when we needed them most. In reality, most of our moms are somewhere in between superhuman and less than stellar. So how do we reflect upon motherhood that is somehow acted out each and every day by real human beings with real frailties built into their lives yet who wish to be the best moms they can be for their children?

As I reflect upon my own mom, with the gifts she gave me along with her human frailties, I think the gift I received from her was the gift of authenticity. Mom was not always the perfect mom as she herself had to deal with the sometimes harsh realities in her own world. Mom did many things for us, and she was always present for those significant events in our lives. Mom taught us about living and loving and what it means to follow our dreams. But above all, I learned from mom how to be real!

I can remember a time in my life when I was struggling with identity. I was in high school, and I was trying hard to fit into the “right” crowd. Mom sat down with me one day, and told me that she would love me no matter what I did. But the one thing she wanted most for me was to be myself … my most authentic self. I’m not sure I quite understood what that meant at the time, but in time I understood. Even if others liked me for who I pretended to be, I would never really like myself because I would know I was a fraud. And if I could like myself, then I could respect myself. If I could respect myself, then I was well on my way to being the authentic child of God I was created to be.

So no matter who people might think I am or how much (or how little) they respect me, I know who I am. Because of my mom, I know I am loved … I am real … I am a child of God. Thanks, Mom, for the gift of letting me just be myself.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Last year, Easter fell at the end of March, and I was ready. From the middle of January, all I could think about was that Easter was early and I needed to be ready. When Easter arrived, I was positioned and ready for it!

This year, Easter is almost a month later, so I wasn’t worried at all. I knew that I had plenty of time and didn’t have to worry. Without warning, April arrived and then Easter was suddenly upon us. I’m not sure what happened, but I have been going crazy dealing with what have quickly become last minute details. I’ve even considering petitioning the Christian community as a whole to see if, by chance, we can put Easter off until May this year! But I already know the answer to that request, so it is best just to keep moving along.

While we have been working feverishly to make sure we have all our plans in place, our church family has been going through a study about listening. The study is based on Bishop Reuben Job’s study, Listen: Praying in a Noisy World, and it is all about finding ways to pray even when things get frantic. I have discovered in the recent days that it is much easier said than done.

I can always rationalize about “busyness” that is not MY busyness. I can talk to people about trying to take time in their busy days, but suddenly I hear myself speaking and wonder about my own “busyness.” My busy life is essential, I rationalize to myself. It is about planning Easter and making sure that the needs of the church are met. Then without noticing, I suddenly realize that my own spiritual life is suffering. I have stopped listening to God because I am too busy working for God.

Therein, lies the rub … my effectiveness in working for God is lessened when I am having trouble listening to God.

So as I write this reflection, I am again reminded how important it is to take the time necessary to pause and wait for God. Even when I am behind in crafting a plan for Easter, there is still time. Even when my mind is racing about the many things on my calendar, there is still time. Even when I struggle to come up for air from the many meetings and conversations that need to happen before Easter arrives, there is still time.

What I have discovered and proclaim again and again is something I have to hear again and again: GOD ALONE HAS GIVEN ME THE GIFT OF TIME, AND ALL MY TIME BELONGS TO GOD!

So I am still … I am waiting to hear a word from God. Time is moving quickly, but there is always time to listen for God.

As we launched on our Lenten theme based on Bishop Reuben Job’s book, Listen: Praying in a Noisy World, I was clicking along with my usual busy schedule. Lots of things going on with church … two studies starting at exactly the same time. Lots of things going on with family … dealing with an aging mom and her finances and the absolute necessity of having time for the new grandbabies.

Then there was the pain I was feeling in my hip and lower back. After having had back surgery in 2012, I remembered the old symptoms of spinal stenosis. And my answer was simple:  “I don’t have time for this.  Body, you will just have to wait.” Then my body spoke to me a different way … a way that I had not heard before. The stomach pain began to build and by the end of last Wednesday, I was in the ER at a local hospital about to be admitted for partial small bowel obstruction. My body was no longer talking to me … it was screaming at me!

During my hospitalization, I realized once again the trap that befalls many clergy. We are so good at listening to the needs of others … our church families and even our own families … but we are not so good at listening to our own bodies. With that realization, listening has taken on a whole new meaning.

As I returned from the hospital, I started thinking about the many ways I am good at listening. Throughout the years, I have been known as someone who listened well. That’s what shaped what I came to call a ministry of presence where people began to believe I was doing a lot for them when all I was doing was listening. It helped me shape my current personal mission statement: my mission is to practice a ministry of presence that reflects the light of Christ on the paths of those seeking a better future. Listening. That’s all it really is.

Then there is the spiritual practice of listening, which is a big part of our theme for Lent. How do we listen to God in a very noisy world? Where and how does God speak to us? Admittedly, there are times when I consider that I have done much better at this task. There are those seasons in my life when I have taken time each day and spent days in personal retreat listening for God. During those times, I have experienced considerable growth. Those are times that have often been nothing short of transformative. My personal commitment during this season of Lent was intentionally to spend more time listening to God.

But it now appears that God has spoken to me through my own body … and in many ways is speaking to me through the church, the Body of Christ. The message I now have is a message to practice self-care. In a conversation with the chair of our Church Council, Avis reminded me that it is not possible to help fill someone else’s bucket if my own bucket is empty (a saying she attributed to my predecessor). My staff and lay leadership have stepped up to encourage me to take the necessary time to heal, and I highly suspect that they hope I will listen to them, even if I am unwilling to listen to my own body.

So I am learning to listen all over again. I am building upon the skills I have at listening to God and to others, and I am now learning anew how to listen to my own body. The problem, of course, is that the clergy, like many in the service sector of our society, have been taught that we are supposed to care for others first and ourselves last.  That is, we are trying to help fill everyone else’s buckets when ours are bone dry.

But if I am truly on a journey with God during this season of Lent, perhaps the first person to whom I should listen is Jesus, who himself took time to listen. He took time for his primary social support group. He took time to be alone with God. Even on his way to the cross, took time to care for himself and allow others to care for him. In Matthew’s 26th chapter, Jesus is visiting in the home of Simon when a woman approaches him and begins to pour expensive perfume on his feet. When she is chastised by the disciples for wasting this expensive perfume, Jesus told them, “Why do you make trouble for the woman? She’s done a good thing for me?” Even as he stood in the shadow of the cross, he took the time to let her care for him.

So I am listening. I am listening to my body and learning to care for myself, and I am learning to let others care for me. I am listening to the Body of Christ … that grace-filled family of faith known as Wellspring, in which I find this great joy … and I am listening to God who beckons me to walk (perhaps a little more slowly) in the footsteps of a Savior whose bucket was full, yet who was poured out for me and for you.

Listen. Do you hear it? It’s the voice of God … it’s the sound of love!