“He began to send them out two by two …” (Mark 6:7)
We are hands on people and we do plenty of learning, and we do that by being active in our community interacting with others, sharing ideas, working by trial and error. As we experience success and failure we debrief and analyze and adjust when we’re done, but most of the learning is in doing things together. And many of those things can be difficult. Our goal is to learn how to love people the way Jesus called us to, so we take every opportunity we can to practice love.
The Jesus way means interacting with people we are often uncomfortable being near us; immigrants, refugees, homeless people, and other marginalized folks in our community. It means sharing God’s love with people in our church community in out-of-the-box ways. For many these are new things. And all of us are apprehensive at best when we begin. But for us, it is the best way to teach about God’s love in extraordinary ways.
When Jesus sent out his disciples, I think he had some of the same thoughts in mind. He sent them out together to do difficult things. He sent them out to preach and to heal. I’m sure they were apprehensive at first. But when they came back, they had amazing stories to tell of God’s power displayed in their world. Community does that together. It goes and does difficult things together — all the time witnessing the amazing work of God in the world around us.
Prayer
Father, send us into the world together, in your name, to love people and to witness your power at work through changing lives. Amen.
Stay encouraged!
Pastor Mike
