A Moment Aside ---- 27 August 2020

 A Moment Aside ---- 27 August 2020

    One of the trials or frustrations of ministering as a pastor is writing/preaching/speaking/teaching about Jesus Christ and the Christian faith in so many aspects is the realization that much of what is told does not get past the listeners’ ear lobes. Not that this is done deliberately… No, not at all! It’s just that what we preach as Christian pastor is not heard for many reasons:

·        Things going on in the hearers’ lives distract them.

·        The message is badly delivered or easily misunderstood because the speaker missed the mark.

·        The listener is in a place in their lives where the message given is unhearable or simply not for them.

·        The speaker annoys the listener in a way that precludes hearing.

·        The speaker is well known to the listener and the message and messenger are confused.

·        The speaker uses the wrong language or is boring or overly fancy or too blunt or too subtle or… add your own.

     Every pastor I know had feelings like this at times. One of our hardest lessons to learn is the realization that we will not be able to reach each and every person we speak the Gospel to. We want to share what we believe and know and celebrate and we might not be the person to get that across to a certain listener. Did we fail? Maybe, but our words might not be able to reach everyone… and that could be hard to take. (We have bruisable egos, too.)

     Paul had a similar sitaution and wrote: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. (1 Corinthians 3:6-8  NRSV) I believe this holds for every Christian, because our words and our behaviors all point to Christ. People look to us to show them Jesus alive and at work in our world. If they can’t see it in us, maybe they’ll see it in someone else.

     We all plant seeds. We all water someone else’s planting or weed someone else’s row. God gives the growth and it is ultimately in God that our trust is placed.