Food for Thought
This morning I was looking for a Bible passage, so I went
to my office bookshelf. I picked up The Message, translated by
Eugene H. Peterson. It was a gift, a long time ago, and probably
not a translation I ever would have bought on my own. But I
realized again this morning why I keep this book on my shelf. I
keep it for the inscription inside: “Rebecca – Hold this message in
your heart: You are loved by God and by us. Your Church Family
at West Nashville Methodist Church.” They gave me this Bible I
graduated from college and moved to Boston.
It’s almost graduation season. Sunday School and
regular schools are beginning the wrap up phase of the year. The
time when teachers will offer blessings (or the secular equivalent)
to their students and send them forth, to the beach, the soccer
field, the summer job.
For those of us whose graduation seasons have past,
those summer blessings are few and far between. The promise of
a home base, the promise of lifelong friendship, the urgings of a
commencement message: I miss those benedictions, don’t you?
At some point right after college I thought about purging the
bookshelf and getting rid of The Message and some of the other
sentimental graduation gifts. But now I am so glad I did not.
Because, the inscription has proven true: from the foundation of
that church (and my family, and my faith journey, and subsequent
churches, too…) I know that God loves me. And even years later,
I still have loving connections in that little church in West
Nashville.
I offer you a silly, sentimental exercise. Choose one
person who is not graduating from anything this season, and offer
them a sentimental inscription anyway. Turn to her some Sunday
in coffee hour and say, You are loved by God, and by the folks at
this church, and that will always be true. Send a note to him and
tell him, even though you live far away, I am tending your roots
here, and you will always find God’s love here. Pray a blessing
upon our church. Write something in the front of a book
somewhere so sentimental that’s it’s bound to make someone cry
when they read it one day, years from now.
And if you receive such a Message? Keep it. Treasure it.
Forever.
Pastor Reebee