Ressurection

2010 has started out to be a downer of a year; apparently? In the last week I have seen a lot of discussion on things that are dying.

• Obviously there is the earthquake in Haiti.
• A new blog acquaintance who’s Grandmother has passed away, which made me think about my Mom and Dad.
• Another blog acquaintance ruminating on the slow decay of a couple small steel towns near Pittsburgh, an area and experience I’m familiar with.
• A blog post commenting about three different focal missional groups reacting strongly to changes they are experiencing.
• And of course there is looking back over the last year of Faith Church that could have gone either way and is still precarious.

Yet each one of these also carries with it a strong sense of new life!

• There was a parallel story of how a town devastated by the 2004 tsunami has rebuilt better than before.
• The grieving granddaughter passed on stories to her young daughters about the great life of their great-grandmother. And I remember how my daughter at five years old still had a sense of what she needed to deal with losing her Grandma.
• The blog of the decaying town focused on the coffee shop that offered a spark of life through “splashes of color” and a community garden.
• The missional movement blog commented about how things we hold onto too tight, trying to keep them the same, makes it all about us instead of the mission. Which made me think, if these are truly organic movements then some things die to give way and nourish the new things.

Most folks simply learn to accept these ups and downs as part of the circle of life. But as Christians shouldn’t we have a much more positive outlook? Christianity itself is rooted in the fundamental belief that out of death rises new life! Christ died and is risen! Paul continually talks about dying to sin and being reborn in Christ!

Faith Church has at least stopped the decline and has a lot to look forward to as we do the hard work of nourishing the things that will bring new life in Christ. There may be some pruning necessary as well but we will all discern those things together, when the time comes, as the Body of Christ.

Agape,
Dave

PS.
These are just some of the many “new life out of old things” I’ve noticed. Maybe sometime I’ll give you my thoughts on the US Post Office or NASA…