Church

I ran across the following article:  Defining Faith – How each generation sees it!

Some thoughts from the article?

Elders (those over 65 or so) see faith as the foundation of life.  Boomers 1946 – 1964 birhtdates)  see faith as providing security.  Busters (younger yet) see faith as helping to discover insights and relationships.

Elders appreciate religious institutions, boomers want content and institutions may or may not help.  Busters find institutions irrelevant since people are more important than the institution itself.

Elders chose Christianity, Boomers reshape Christianity to their own "selfish" religion.  Busters are existentialists finding spirituality in wide ranging discussion.

Check it out!  This is based on research from 2001.  Seems to have a ring of truth.

When you are with these people, you bask.  Not that words aren’t present.  The words are behind the veil.  As though you know there is discussion and chatter.  But that doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that they are there.  Their physical presence is next to you.  And you miss it when they are gone.

My dad is  one of those people.  I’ve thought a lot lately about things we have done together.  His tips on electronics when I was working on a model train set.  His help in finding cars and suggestions of repair.  His ability to do math and encourage me in it.  His desire to be with us for our activities whenever he could.

But what sticks out is just sitting with him, or walking with him — being with him.  That is life.

This past few weeks I’ve also experienced that with one of our former parishioners.  John Graham passed away on a Monday.  His funeral was on a Friday.  A week later I was sitting in my office imagining the congregation on Sunday. 

And John wasn’t there.  And I missed him.

I have been working through renewing commitments in my life.  Four areas:  ministry, care, time and writing.  The four objects below represent these areas.  Guess which one is which!!

As the day finishes I return to my younger days.

In childhood I remember the end of the day.  We were encouraged to pray.  There was a simple prayer — "Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

I do not want to be presumptuous.  Neither do I want to disavow what God has said.  In these past years I have immersed myself more and more in Scripture.  I desire my thought patterns to be conformed to the thought patterns of God.

I do not wish to be overconfident.  But, my reading leads me to believe that those who wholeheartedly follow God are destined to eternal life.  I do waver some days in my commitment, but my heart is constantly drawn back to God.  I feel a tug that will not let me stay away long!

Towards that end, I read my childhood pray as one of hopeful and confident entreaty.  During the evening and throughout the day, God will keep my soul (the word for soul encompasses the whole of my being — body, emotion, mind — the seen and the  unseen!).  And if I die — and as I have watched Christians die in this past while — I trust God to grab ahold of them and of me.  And so, I shall see Jesus face to face. 

For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain – to be absent from the body is to be present with my Lord!