—Ephesians 4:1-5

Dear Nora McCracken, Jack Richardson, Owen Smith, Landon Brooks, Samuel Hankins, and Sophia Streetman, the confirmands of our church in 2022, and my little brothers and sisters in Christ:

I’m writing this letter to you on the eve of your confirmation and, for some, your baptism. This will be a great day in the Lord for you and our community, and it marks a transition in your life from childhood to the beginnings of adulthood. When you confess your faith before the congregation, and when you join by either being baptized or remembering your baptisms, you are stepping out on a faith given you by God. It is your faith, given by the Father in the power of the Spirit, uniting you to Christ. Your job from this day forward will be to continue to make it your own all the days of your life.

In your ongoing growth in the Lord, I would ask you to remember two things. While Christ has claimed you as His own and spoken to you each in the language of your own hearts, Christ has handed this faith on to you through a community at First Presbyterian and in your families. That means that neither you nor I nor any of us are truly our own. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4, this gift of faith we have been given comes with a responsibility to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” That means that our faith eventually leads us to serve and love one another more than ourselves because we know that we all belong to “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” We are equals. We are siblings. We are family, in Christ Jesus.

The second thing I would encourage you to do as you grow older and more mature in Christ is to remain gentle. Paul reminds us that we are to conduct ourselves in a spirit of humility and gentleness because that is what life looks like when we are submitted to Jesus Christ. This involves patience. The fruit of gentleness is love’s greatest work in us.

I think that this second thing, remaining gentle, will probably be the hardest thing for you, as it will be for all of us. I don’t want to suggest that things used to be better in the “good old days,” but in a way that you may or may not be able to see, the world has become colder and harder. Technology is part of that, and you have grown up with technologies and options I could have only dreamed of when I was your age. The bigger issue, I think, is that the world is both bigger and smaller at the same time. You aren’t tied to any particular place; in a matter of hours, you can be on the other side of the world. That means it is easier than ever to leave behind the ties that brought you this far, as you make your way in the world. It also means that the world is bigger because you can lose yourself in all the options at hand. It is so very easy in the world as we know it now to lose our gentleness, our tenderness, our sense of being tied to and connected with the world around us.

As you confess your faith, I encourage you to cling to Christ and cultivate gentleness in your hearts. Don’t let the world and whatever wonderful future God has in store for you blind you to the fact that you belong to much more than yourself. Remember love defined in Jesus: self-giving, tender, and gentle.

Here I leave you with the words of Jean Vanier, a leader in the L’Arche movement, as quoted by Stanley Hauerwas: “Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness… Community is made of the gentle concern that people show each other every day. It is made up of the small gestures, of services and sacrifices which say ‘I love you’ and ‘I am happy to be with you.’ It is letting the other go in front of you, not trying to prove that you are in the right in a discussion; it is taking the small burdens from the other” (Living Gently in a Violent World, p.77).

Allow the Lord to be “above all and through all and in all” that you say and do.

In Christ,

Pastor Sam

Here is the latest on our Sunday morning adult classes and Bible study offerings:

Come to the church Wednesday, May 18, from 5:30 to 8:30 for Bike Night! You’ll find us round the back on the rear driveway having a whole lot of fun. Bring your bike, scooter, or other people-powered wheels! For more information, email Lilly Osborne.