Streams of Mercy
I read each issue of The Presbyterian Outlook from cover to cover – for encouragement and challenge, for a voice of reason amid the rancor of public discourse in our day, for news of churches in many places living lives worthy of their calling.
Jill Duffield’s editorial, “Milestones and Moment” is memorable. She tells of learning to focus less on “milestones” and more on “moments.” I used both of those words in yesterday’s service, as we honored our only high school graduate and baptized the infant grandson of a church family.
Knowing that this infant grandson lives in another city, we made our promise with these words – “Relying on God’s grace, do we, as members of the church of Jesus Christ, promise to pray for this child, that he would come to know and follow Christ, and while we will not hold him in our arms, from week to week, do we promise to hold him in our hearts, praying that he might know the love of God and God’s people wherever he is? Do we so promise?”
With one loved-filled voice, we so promised! We found ourselves at a moment and a milestone – a moment of grace in baptism, and a milestone in this child’s journey of life and faith.
Our mission story usually carries us far away from Jackson Springs, but this Sunday as, one by one, the children spun our world globe – instead of stretching the ribbon from Jackson Springs to another corner of God’s creation, we came back around to Jackson Springs. Our high school graduate and his teen-age sister sat among the children on this special occasion and we reflected on how quickly they had grown, and how quickly the children sitting around them would grow up as well.
We found ourselves once again at a moment and a milestone – a moment of celebrating one of our own growing up and a milestone in his life’s journey, his graduation from high school.
I read from “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum. According to Fulghum, “All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work, every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”
As we marked these milestones together in worship today, I was reminded of all the precious moments that pave the way for such milestones. May God help us not to miss the moments along the way! Let us “mark with abandon the milestones, give thanks relentlessly for the moments, and live in such awareness of our blessings that we cannot help but be a blessing to others in their milestones and moments.”
Giving thanks for milestones and moments and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing!
Elizabeth