the leisure to exercise (and the few times I did my reflexes were so bad, my legs didn’t hurt until the second day) and shoes scuffed from scraping too many curbs as I got out of the car to ring somebody’s doorbell. Give me the faith, Lord, that works hard enough to be dissatisfied with self-assessments that always come back “pretty good.”
And as a pastor of this church, help me strive not only for a worship service where everybody can and does actually sing what is to be sung, but everyone, kids and adults alike, carries home something from the sermons that they can use, so that later in life, when they walk into a pastor’s office for the first time, they can say, “I went to church as a child, but over the years I got away from it and I realize that’s what I’m missing in my life, so I want to start coming to this church.” Give me a church that doesn’t urge its members to run away from their problems but a church that proclaims it is the Lord’s work when our faith works to care for ailing parents, to check homework, to keep in touch with friends who, because of hard times, do not want to be kept in touch with. Give me a faith that faces down my restless fears at night and is ready to meet the dragons at dawn.
Faith Works
1.Will I meet him with my head in the clouds?
2.Or with chocolate smudges on my robe?
And nothing will be neat. And all the strings might have loose ends, as far as we can tell. But we will have dared for the Lord, we will have worked for the Lord, we will have loved and lived. And we will have known it, as all the saints of old discovered. With our God is forgiveness. With our God is courage. With our God is