Those Little Things

I won't be in worship with you this Sunday, the 16th -- instead, I'll be at the church I attended during my Junior and Senior High School days, in Dixon, Illinois. They are celebrating their 175th anniversary this year, as we are, and they've invited the people who've become pastors from their church to come back and share some reflections.

Here's what I'll be sharing - that it was the smallest things they provided, the smallest things that happened, that made the most impact on my life and spiritual development. It was the people, hidden in the kitchen, who cooked breakfasts for our early service youth summer choir who helped make church be inviting to me. It was those patient high school Sunday School teachers who came back week after week to be with (often distracted) teens, who impressed me, ultimately, with their sheer gift of perseverance. That perseverance, more than words, communicated that something about this Christianity really mattered to them. It was those women, who seemed sort of old to me at the time, who surprised me notes of encouragement in college, and helped me realize how important such encouragement can be. It was all those little things that became the Gift of Church to me.

And, on Sunday, just think of the scores of "little things" that will be happening at Downers Grove First - little steps of a CROP Walk to bring clean water to people in Kenya. Little gifts of a lunch and fellowship after worship to help us gather around tables as a church family. Moments of preaching and sharing and praying and singing in worship that will leave us looking at life differently, and remembering once again Whose we really are. Conversations and stories and projects in Sunday School that will help children and youth begin to hear a call of God upon their lives.

May we, each day, receive and give away those "little things" that God has placed into our hearts and into our hands.