Yesterday I was in a gathering of clergy facilitated by a man from the Center for Renewal at Grand View University. His topic was the role of ministers in equipping the people of their congregation for ministry. He brought several books on the topic. The one I was given to “summarize” was called “Faith as a Way of Life” or something like that. In the book, the author said that one barrier to people seeing their lives as a ministry is the compartmentalization that occurs in daily life. You have work and the set of ethics and values expressed there. You have your role as a “consumer” in our economy that has certain expectations and values. You have the sports arena, with its own set of values. There is the school system, and on and on. There are all these separate arenas that we engage each day. And it can seem as though church and spirituality is just one among many.
The author of this book does not think it is a problem to have many different arenas of life. But he believes that our faith and spirituality really needs to be present in each arena rather than being separate. Our reading this morning is suggesting just that - that our sense of God’s presence and guidance and vision is all around us and unites us with all things and in all aspects of life.
What does life look like and feel like when we are united internally and externally through our sense of God in and through it all?
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