I’ve been dying to tell you about this book I’m reading. It’s called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller (who wrote a very popular memoir called Blue Like Jazz a few years ago). It’s the sort of book that makes me want to nudge the person next to me and say, “Listen to this!”

In the book, Miller explores what makes a good story, something he had to think about a lot when he was approached by a team of filmmakers who wanted to make a movie out of his memoir. To make a good movie, though, they had to change some things around in order to make his life a better story, which led Miller to the realization that the elements of a really good story are also the elements of a really good life. If you want to live a better life, he suggests, you have to live a better story.

I’m intrigued by this, though I have my reservations (usually, a really good story ends with a riding-off-into-the-sunset fairy tale ending, while life – even a really good one – rarely does). I do like the notion that we get to decide what we do with our lives, and that we ought to seek out the story we want to be living.

The scriptures for Sunday seem to encourage this kind of reflection, too. The letter to the Colossians (3:1-11), challenges us to set our minds on things above, living on earth while being mindful of heaven. In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus tells a parable about a rich farmer who has an unusually abundant crop and decides to hoard it all for himself. Jesus reminds us that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” So, what does your life consist of?

What kind of story are you living?

I take my daughter to the church garden early on Saturday morning. We bring her “tools” – a small plastic shovel and rake, and a bucket for collecting rocks. I have my garden gloves, so we also bring along a pair for her to wear. Hers are the stretchy kind she wears in winter – blue, with pink hearts on them – but she doesn’t seem to mind.

She is still a little too young and grabby to really be helpful in the garden. I have to steer her away from the not-quite-ripe tomatoes, and when I try to get her to pull weeds, she pulls a few too many plants instead. The other gardeners are gracious – they are good-hearted, patient church folks who know that there are things more important than perfect gardening – and one of them invites her over to look at a caterpillar.

The beans have come in, and the squash and zucchini have gone berserk, doubling in size over night so that we’ve had to line up volunteers to harvest every day. Tomatoes will be here before we know it, and rows of corn at the far end of the garden are already higher than my daughter’s head. Cantaloupe the size of softballs lay in waiting, with pumpkins promised before fall.

It’s the second summer for our community garden, and it feels good to be here on this sunny morning, working together. Like most good projects, it’s been championed by a small handful of hard-working and faithful people, and supported by many others who come when they can. We don’t have individual plots; everybody pitches in and does what’s needed. The harvest gets shared with anybody who works in the garden, and with anybody at church who wants some, and with the local food pantry. On Sunday mornings, folks bring in extras from their own gardens and add it to the bounty near our front doors. We don’t keep track of who brought what, or who took what, or who worked the hardest. If you can help, you help. If you need some, you take some.

On this morning, after the beans have been picked and we’ve made a dent in the weeds, we gather in the shade for a blessing. One of our most regular gardeners talks about how important this project has been for her. “I sit at a desk all day long,” she says, “and then I get to come out here and play in the dirt, and it’s wonderful.” We ask God’s blessing on the ground and on the harvest, and pray for the people this food will feed. Someone has brought a guitar so we sing a little bit, which feels just right. The breeze sweeps through us just then, a welcome freshness on the hot morning, and I am pretty sure it is the breath of God.

One day recently when nobody else was around, I happened to walk by the sanctuary just when the afternoon sun was streaming full force into the west windows. The light caught my eye and I stepped inside. The sanctuary was quiet, as it is most of the week, as if catching the beauty of that sunlight and holding it for us until we can get back there on Sunday. Even though all the pews were empty and the room was still, there was an energy there that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

“I was glad when they said to me,” writes the author of Psalm 122, “‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”

I know the church isn’t about buildings. I know you can commune with God in nature, you can find the Holy Spirit on a hike through the mountains or in the roar of waves on the beach.

But have you ever sat in a room where the light falls just right, where the prayers of the church have been raised for generations, where songs of praise soak the walls and rise up from the carpet, where the people of God gather, where the spirit of ancient words fill the air?

If you think the afternoon sun is breathtaking, you should see the light shine in here on Sunday mornings.

This week, a group from FCC is on mission trip to the Dominican Republic. As they are able, they are sending updates about their work, which will be posted here.

You know that song, “The Grand Old Duke of York?” He had ten thousand men; he marched them up the hill and then he marched them down again. And when you’re up, you’re up, and when you’re down, you’re down, and when you’re only halfway up, you’re neither up nor down. Every time you sing “up” or “down,” you stand up, or sit down. That song never fails to leave my daughter in a breathless fit of giggles on the floor.

I feel similarly breathless after a run through chapter 10 of Luke’s gospel. Last week, the Good Samaritan story left us with a command to go and do. This week, Jesus visits Martha and Mary’s home, and chastises Martha for doing too much. So, which is it? Up or down? Are we supposed to be up and running off to serve our neighbor? Or down on the floor at Jesus’s feet, listening for the word of God?

What do you want from us, Jesus?

The answer, I think, is: both. Sometimes we have to get up and act – especially when there’s something happening right in front of us that we can do something about. Sometimes we have to sit down and rest – especially if our work has us so distracted that we’ve lost sight of the Christ sitting in our own living room. It means paying attention, every day, to see if God is calling us to go and do, or come and sit. This is a think-on-your-feet kind of faith we practice, one that demands a different response to whatever situation we’re in, one that requires agility and patience and grace. It’s enough to leave you breathless at the wonder of it all.

As a community, we’re grieving this week, after losing two long-time members of our congregation. One lost a courageous fight with cancer at an age far too young, when all she really wanted was to play with her young grandchildren. The other had lived a long life of service, but suffered from a debilitating illness that rendered her bedridden and kept her from being a part of the church she loved.

As hard as these times are in the life of our church, it is also at these times when I feel most hopeful and blessed. I have watched the ways our congregation has cared for these families, and as always, I am inspired by incredible acts of generosity and care: people who have visited and prayed, cooked and cried.

Two weeks ago, when one of the women went into the hospital for the last time, a friend of the family stopped by the church. He wanted to make sure we had heard the news, but I also think he wanted to be somewhere where we understood his sadness. He wanted to know that we all felt as helpless as he did in the face of death. He wanted to find a home for his grief.

So we’ll grieve together in the next few days, as we celebrate these lives and the blessings they were to us. And then we’ll gather again on Sunday morning, to give thanks to our God, who promises the hope of everlasting life.

Someone asked me recently, as we were watching the latest unsuccessful attempt to stem the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, how to make sense of this mess. I certainly don’t have any easy answers to that question, but here are some things I’ve been thinking about:

We’re all complicit and we need to change. God has given us some responsibility for caring for the earth (see Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, for starters), and for the most part we’ve done a lousy job of it. I know that for most of us, it isn’t realistic for us to give up our cars or ride our bikes to work. So we’ve got to advocate for new, cleaner, renewable energy sources, and we’ve got to make individual choices that help us walk a little more lightly on this earth.

The poor and the vulnerable are almost always hit hardest when disasters hit. We saw it in Katrina, in Haiti, and now again it is the folks who live along the gulf coast, the fishermen who make a hard living in those waters who will suffer the most. It’s worth remembering that in the gospels, over and over again, Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is first for the poor, the oppressed, the hungry, the hurting.

We worship a God of mercy and grace. While I believe that people (and corporations and governments) ought to be held accountable for their actions, I find the jokes about plugging the leak with BP executives offensive and mean. I feel for the BP employees who are dealing with this mess, for the guilt they must be feeling, and the pressure they must be under. They have been in my prayers as well as the families of those who died in the explosion and all those along the gulf whose lives are changing.

God works through our messes. This isn’t the first time we’ve screwed things up, nor will it be the last. The scriptures are full of stories of imperfect people who do their best to thwart God’s purposes. But somehow, God always finds away to work through it all, in spite of it all. God is there with the fishermen who have lost their jobs. God is there with the families of those who died. God is there with those who are working night and day to fix the problem.

God is there. God’s story continues.

Thanks be to God.

From Sunday’s message:

Most of us have our little routines – we take the same route to work or school each day, go down the same roads, take the same left turn, turn into the driveway exactly the same way every day. Sometimes you can drive all the way home without even thinking about how you got from one place to another.

But then, occasionally, you take a detour for whatever reason – the road was closed or you made a wrong turn – and you find yourself on a different road entirely. You discover things you didn’t know were there, maybe a little park just a few blocks away from your house, or a flowering tree you never noticed before. Sometimes it’s good to get out of our routines and see something new.

That’s what happened when I started looking at the scriptures for this Sunday. Read more »

Holy and ever-living God, God of grace and glory, God of power and might: Hear us as we pray. We gather to give you praise; we stand in wonder at your incredible creation and to stay thank you for our place in it. We are amazed, O God, when we stop and look, at all the ways you are at work in our lives, in small, subtle ways, and in big, incredible ways.

We give you thanks today for all that you have done for us. For walking with us through the wilderness and bringing us into the promised land… For walking with us to the cross and emerging from the empty tomb… For calling to us beside our fishing boats and inviting us to life with you, we give you thanks, O Lord.

We pray for our church today, and all the ways that we are trying to be the body of Christ together… We pray for our youth as they prepare for mission trips this summer, and we thank you for inspiring them to do good work in your world. We ask your blessing on our garden where planting has begun and soon we will see your earth coming to life with food we can share to feed the hungry. We pray for those in our church who gather today to study your word, here in worship, in Sunday school, in book studies and individual times of prayer. We pray for the leaders of our congregation and those who do so many unnoticed things to support the ministries of the church.

We pray for our world this morning. We pray for those who are working in the Gulf of Mexico cleaning up the oil spill. Forgive us for the careless ways we treat your creation. We pray for those who serve the poor and the hungry, the refugee and the immigrant… Forgive us for the careless ways we treat your people.

Inspire us and challenge us, O God, to do good work in this world. Call us out from our comfort zones and push us to see the pain and brokenness around us… Give us strength that we might truly be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.

Hear our prayers, O God, as we lift them to you, for we know that this is your world; this is the day that you have made; we will be glad and rejoice forever. Amen and amen.

On Sunday, April 18, several members of our congregation share their memories of the past and their visions for the future of our church. Here are some of their reflections:

From Neil Stewart:

We have been here for just three years next month, but it really feels as if we have been here much, much longer….in a good way!    Over that time, so many of you have welcomed us, made us part of your lives, and made our daughter feel special.  We are thankful that when we relocated to Greensboro from Cincinnati, we were fortunate enough to find the church’s website and brave enough to come visit that first time. Read more »