Love in the Small and Big Stuff

Gabe and I visited Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church this morning. It was my church home for a decade, and while I'm searching for a church at the moment...I keep coming "home" to H-BIC. While I love the theology of grace amidst the brokenness and the multi-ethnic vision, I struggle with the theology of the worship where there seems to be little "we" and a lot of Jesus and me. I desire for the community of faith to be more evident in the worship. It was great to visit, and to be in a place where Gabe and I both know others and are known.

The sermon was on a verse from I Corinthians 13 where Paul says that "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful"(4-5). Essentially, Pastor Woody suggested that the reality is that life is often hard and unfair. There are some little things in life that we need to just "let go". He said, and I quote, "some of us need to learn the art of not sweating the small stuff". [Only Woody can make theological connections between Scripture and the texts of pop culture.] Now that's easy when we're talking about how different people squeeze toothpaste or interpret scrabble rules, but what about the stuff where letting go isn't so obvious. But life's disappointments also impact the big stuff. Our challenge, then, is to discover what we need to do when our deepest desires go unmet.

And the answer, in a nutshell, is to allow the love of Christ to transcend real experience....for us to choose kindness and patience in the midst. And, God uses all things...sometimes especially the junk in our lives...to transform us. As much as I wish I'd been spared some of life's disappointments, I wouldn't trade who I have become in light of them. And I know that the transformation of the junk in my life occurred solidly amidst the community of H-BIC church. It was good to visit “home” this morning, and challenged me to reconsider the parameters for choosing church in the first place. Perhaps I , too, need to let go of the "small stuff" and return to a place that has faithfully helped so many through the "big stuff" of life's disappointments.