Hello,
It was 88 degrees today in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, but it
didn’t feel like it. The humidity
was unusually low. So, with the
sky dotted with a few puffy cottonballs what else should a guy do on his day
off than go outside and tackle the pile of downed trees that were the result of
the sand mound septic system that we had to build (that, is another story!).
My wife and I have been working away at the sequoia sized stack of trees
for quite a while; tugging, sawing, and stacking. This, we hoped, would be our final stab at this pile of
trees. We started around 10:00 in
the morning digging through dirt buried limbs to reach the larger logs and
stumps. Sometimes the stumps were
small enough to be leverage by hand and rolled out of the way, but most of the
time they required being secured by our well worn rope and pulled out of the
pile by our tractor. Maybe in my
prime I would not say that it was hard work, but needless to say, I am not in
my prime any more. The time passed
quickly as Kate and I whittled away at the pile, but the pile wasn’t the only
thing that was whittling away….my strength was being whittled away. So, after four hours of work as I was
bending over to lift some logs that I had cut into the bucket of the tractor, I
suddenly felt my legs turn rubbery and my head heliumy (if rubber can be made
into an adjective…why not helium?).
Finding a log, I sat down and watched Kate finish loading the logs into
the bucket (no comments from the peanut gallery!).
“I’m beat,” I said to her.
“Go sit in the shade,” Kate said to me. I wobbled my way over to a spot under a tree, put my head
between my knees, took some deep breathes, and I began to begin to feel a bit
of recovery.
There have been days this summer that the heat of the day was
oppressive, I found myself wilting, and I called it quits before my limbs went
rubber. But today I was caught off
guard. The humid-less heat was
sneaky. Thankfully, there was
shade nearby.
Not every day is wiltingly hot.
I don’t mean temperature-wise.
I mean pressure-wise, stress-wise, failure-wise, guilt-wise, lost and
confused-wise. But whether you are
striding to the prime of your life, firmly afoot in the prime or life, or
past-prime the heat of life has the power to bring us all to our knees.
So, when you find yourself looking for shade – calmly looking because
you could feel the heat working on you, or urgently looking because the heat
has snuck up on you – let me point you to some shade. Christ’s church.
When the Church is what it is meant to be….and sometimes it falls
short…..but, when it is what it is meant to be, it is a place of shade from the
heat of the world. A place where
we can rest our heads in prayer and gather strength. A place where we can fill our lungs with the breath of the
Spirit and draw upon power of God.
A place where our sins, our guilt, our failures, and our broken dreams
are shattered by the forgiveness of Jesus’ body and blood.
The world, of course, can also be very cold, but that is another Bungee
Cord. Today, when the heat tried
to get the best of me, let me welcome you to come and take a place in the shade
this Sunday.
Jesus also said, ‘With what can we
compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a
mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the
seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all
shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make
nests in its shade.’ Mark 4:3-32.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (Ggap),
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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