Streams of Mercy

“CROP Hunger Walks: Ending Hunger….One Step at A Time.” This year’s CROP Hunger Walk in the Sandhills was a few weeks ago, and the Jackson Springs Presbyterian Team participated. One of the men in our church, when asked if he was going go to participate, replied, “Yes, I’m going to walk with the family.” I smiled when I heard about that exchange, thankful that he understood that truly we are family, a community of faith.

In her book Searching for Shalom, Ann Weems includes this poem:

My Church Family

Faces and words and glimpses of souls . . .

one by one we come.

We are many, and then one.

Precious faces, tender words, sweet glimpses into souls . . .

Just being here among you is a joy!

Unending thank-yous rise within me

for these beloved ones within your Church, O God.

Blessed be their lives! Blessed be your Church!

“Too much of our time is spent in meetings where no meeting takes place….we arrive and leave as strangers,” says Weems. We in the church are busy with our committees and their agendas, our projects and plans, our worship and study, our fellowship and witness. In the midst of all the busy-ness of church life, let us remember that we are family, and nurture and care for one another.

Giving thanks for one who reminds us that we are family, for “faces and words and glimpses of souls…as one by one we come,” and for streams of mercy, never ceasing!

Elizabeth