Service is the best way to say 'thanks'
A
friend of mine. an intern studying to be a Lutheran minister, was
raised in Kentucky in the Assembly of God, and so the piety he grew up
with differs greatly from what he finds in the congregation he
is serving.
He was telling me a funny
story about doing a children's sermon on the Gospel story of ten
lepers but only one came back to say thank you. First, he
got the children to say, "Thaaaank you, Jesus" And then he got
the whole congregation to join in. Not something you hear every
day in a Lutheran congregation.
Or is it? It occurs to
me that Lutherans may be a pretty staid bunch, but we say thank you
Jesus every day.
The largest non-governmental
social service agency in the United States is LSS, Lutheran Social
Services. We say thank you Jesus by the way we live our lives
and by the way we care for others.
And we will
continue to do so through LSS and Lutheran World Hunger and Lutheran
Disaster Relief and by stocking our local food pantries and working in
food banks and soup kitchens.
We don't have a monopoly on
saying thank you this way. We join millions of other Christians
by celebrating what God has given us in Christ Jesus.
Luther said that the hardest
conversion is the pocket book. Getting a congregation to say
thank you Jesus is great. But only the Holy Spirit can empower
us to live it.
Lord,
We thank you for all that you have given us, especially your Son and
the Holy Spirit who empowers us to follow and to give thanks.
Amen
Copyright (c)
2004, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at
mspastor@aol.com.
The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St.
Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI. A lifelong Lutheran, she
came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric
intensive care. She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at
Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before
becoming a New Englander. She is still trying to understand the
accent. While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship
Team. That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more,
what makes for generosity.
She
has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of
life she learned from them.
