The weaving grows...

We ask questions, we want answers.  In asking questions we are seeking information, clarification, trying to understand something or just want to know a good restaurant for a meal or where to find the restroom.  Most of the time, we prefer to ask a question once and get a satisfying answer that is truthful and accurate.  But in our lives of faith, there are usually more questions than answers and some questions need to be asked frequently, knowing that each time a different answer will surface, and that contains its own truthfulness and accuracy.

At Pastor’s School this year, it was all about the questions.  Our leader, Rev. Jill Rowland, a Lutheran Pastor from Hood River, frequently asked the question “How have you seen/experienced God at work in the neighborhood – your neighborhood, your church’s neighborhood, the community, and the world?”  The question is not so much about what is God doing inside your church, but what is God doing outside the walls of the church and even outside of the Christian community.  She asked if we are willing to look, name and lift up how we see and experience God at work in the everyday worlds of our neighborhoods, in secular movies and books that touch lives, and in community organizations.

It is not a new question, but one that does not get asked or answered often enough.  How is God at work at your place of work, at your home, at the store, at your neighborhood school or where you spend time volunteering?  What do you see or experience God doing as you journey about your day?

I have started asking myself these questions more intentionally of late.  Dottie Tunstall gave me one answer last week as she described to me the care that she received from her night nurse while she was in ICU.  She simply remembers him sitting in her room during the middle of the night and what a gift of comfort that was.  As she told me about the experience, I found myself saying – this is God at work in the neighborhood.

So start asking the question – What is God doing in the neighborhood today?  Each day, each of you will get a different truthful, accurate answer.  Then it will be time for the next question – How is God calling us to participate in what God is already doing?

Blessings, Wendy