Originially published 3/21/10 on Blogger:
For: The Essentials Formation Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt
Yesterday was my grandpa’s funeral. He had a very full life, living to be 91 years old, so it was more of a celebration of his life (as some so endearingly call funerals). My grandma, his wife, passed away 17 years ago and since then it seemed as though he was on pause, that he wanted to be with her more than he wanted to be here. I know he often wondered why God had taken her so early and kept him here so long. So, he finally got his wish – to be with Grandma.
With all of my thoughts on life and death this past week, I’ve had the idea that this post needed to be some great, theological, insightful writing that people would ‘oooo’ and ‘ahhh’ over. 🙂 But, I haven’t had the brain power (due to lack of sleep) or the time (due to helping my widowed mom with the passing of her widowed dad) to get anything down on my blog, much less have it turn out to be the awesome entry I’d built it up to be! haha
I will say, though, that I can see more clearly the purpose of my life, the purpose of being a child of God. Our pastor has been preaching through Matthew in recent weeks and today we were in 5:13-16; he focused on the idea of us being the ‘salt and light’ of the world. There was a point yesterday at the funeral when I was trying to juggle 8 people and their needs at once – my mom, my 16 mos old, my husband and older kids (who were watching the 16 mos old) and my brother and his family (who wasn’t feeling well and arrived at the church right before the service started). To my amazement, I handled it very well and calmly…which HAD to have been the Spirit working in me because I haven’t had a stressful moment like that go smoothly for quite awhile. I had prayed to be a witness to my family during the time of the funeral and other activities that go along with it so I was thankful God provided what I needed to be that witness and to care for the needs of my family (mom and bro included) during the funeral yesterday.
Most of us have heard a lesson on this verse about ‘salt and light’…the thing that always jumps out at me when talking about being salt and it’s many uses, is that salt is used as a ‘flavor booster’, to make food taste better. If I would like to be ‘salt’, I need to make others’ lives better; I need to touch them in a way that leaves them better off than they were before they came into contact with me. That may manifest itself in different ways, depending on what is needed and what the person is going through – a friendly face smiling at them, a kind gesture, a helping hand, an instruction or exhortation, a rebuke or hard lesson, or even a discipline or truthful word that is needed for growth.
To apply this idea of being the salt of the earth to this week’s lesson about the spiritual element of ‘wind’…I not only need to remember to take time to catch my own wind, to inspire myself to continue running the race of faith, but I also need to look for ways, when I am serving others, to be their wind (or salt) of inspiration to continue fighting the good fight. How can I continually balance the taking care of others with the caring for myself without focusing too much on either? Out of the two, I think I get the short end of the stick most of the time – I know I need to keep my own cup full in order to be able to share the overflow with others but it always seems like I’m last on the list and by the time the end of the list gets here, I’m too ___________(fill in the blank).
Let’s see…most of us have salt shakers on the table, reminding us at meal time that better tasting food is just a shake away. Why not put something in front of myself to remind me to grab some wind now and then; that an inspired spiritual life is just a ‘gust’ away? I’ve found the wind-themed picture of the sailboat to use as a visual cue this week. With it on my desktop and also on my cell phone wallpaper, I have remembered to take a moment each day to inspire myself with God’s love/ creation/ word/ song/ etc. Now I’m going to extend that to the other weeks of this course and beyond…I’m going to find a picture for each element discussed in this class and put them in front of myself for 1 week each month (for the next year) to remind myself to keep the spiritual elements in balance. So, off I go to search for some fire, water and earth pics!
