Beloved Friends- During the month of August I will be away for a time of sabbath and renewal. While I am gone, I am offering some of my favorite poems to be solace and strength for your journey. May God bless each of us with silence, rest, play, and the company of those we love in hopes of remembering and renewing our deepest joy.
And may you never forget that you are loved,
Lisa
A Future Not Our Own (by Bishop Ken Untener)
It helps now and then to step back and take a
long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our
vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection, no
pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include
everything.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water the seeds already planted knowing that they hold
future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further
development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our
capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense
of liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it
very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is
the
difference between the master builder and the
worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.