As I write this letter to you, I am sitting in a hospital room with my Mom breathing her last breaths. As I grieve the loss of my Mom, I also can’t help but feel great gratitude for each of you offering prayers for my family. I feel your presence with me in the room…the very presence of Jesus in my heart.
Yesterday, my Mom’s pastor made a visit to us in the hospital. As we were chatting I realized how important church community is in our lives. Both Cathy and I felt loved and cared for by his presence.
One late night my thoughts went back 62 years ago when my life began. I began to think about how it was my Mom then who spent every daytime hour and many sleepless nights sitting and being with me. She would watch me breathe my first and subsequent breaths. She had to feed me, clean me – from top to bottom, cuddle me, speak or sing words of hope into my tiny ears, pray with me and assure me that all was well with my soul.
Then my mind jumped to the present moment. I thought, here I am 62 years later and now it is my turn to sit with Mom. It is my job to watch her erratic, shallow breathing, care for her basic needs, gently touch her forehead and arms, wipe her mouth when needed, call for the nurses in times ofpain, speak words of eternal hope into her ears, pray with her and assure her that all is well with her soul.
Then, I connected the dots. Here I am sitting in a hospital room with my Mom who is dying but also the one who gave me life. It is all so surreal. It’s all a great mystery of endless love. It’s all about helping one another to live fully alive in the moment and then leave a legacy of God’s love for the generations coming behind in the end. That’s when it hit me, this is what stewardship is truly all about.
Stewardship is not primarily about a budget; it’s all about being present to one another.
- It’s about a community that walks together through the valley of grief by praying for one another, no matter how many hundreds of miles they may be apart.
- It’s about a community that cares for people from birth until death in the living ways of Jesus’:
- compassion (unconditional love and welcome for all)
- forgiveness (as a daily practice of life)
- service (as the way to salvation from self-centered pride and egotism)
- and wisdom (that leads to inner freedom from pride, possessions and power).
- It’s about a community that cares for all people (Loudoun, DC, Guatemala, Uganda…) from birth until death.
- It’s about Crossroads' Circles and the larger Crossroads family texting prayers of love and support each day.
Please know that’s why we are asking one another to make a financial pledge for 2018. We need each other’s loving support from cradle to grave. Can you imagine your life without the compassion, forgiveness, service and wisdom of your Crossroads’ family? I can’t.
When Jesus said, “I am with you always” he knew that even after his own death it was possible for his love to be present through people like you and me. That’s why we need the church. We are the body of Christ ministering to one another every day from start to finish and that takes a community resourced with the unconditional love of God as given to us most fully in Jesus.
