As Grace Extends

I finally made it home from Columbia, MO, a little big ago, after a two hour drive turned into an almost three hour drive; an accident meant bumper-to-bumper traffic for 5 miles or so. That's the first real incident I've encountered in all my driving, though, so this is me quitting my whining and praying that all involved are OK!

I was there to present at Campus Lutheran Church, another that I got to know during my Ysleta years. We bonded while knee-deep in concrete in March 2011! I was going to customize my PowerPoint with some photos from their week until I realized this one has been included from the get-go on the slide where I talk about past professional experience; three of the four kids with me belong to the pastor!

I could have easily left early this morning, but I seized the opportunity to spend last night with "Grandma T." She actually belongs to my best friend, but we adopted each other my freshman year of college when she and her late husband, who lived in Springfield at the time, would faithfully pick me up for church every Sunday. 

My involvement in this morning's events consisted of a "Mission Sharing Moment" during the 8:30 and 11:00 services, with a presentation during the Christian Education Hour sandwiched in between. My spiel was interrupted by a laptop with a dying battery that then decided it needed to install updates, but there was no shortage of insightful questions to keep us occupied.

The sermon - and children's message - text was the Epistle reading, 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1:

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Both elements alluded to the work of missionaries in extending God's grace to more and more people and to the collective nature of that work. In just those seven verses, Paul uses first person plural pronouns 14 times! I'm excited to help ramp up the effectiveness of short-term teams in multiplying the reach of the Gospel and appreciated the tie-in, intentional or not :)

Until next time, blessings!