Good Morning, Church Family and Friends,
Our church has just begun our annual fall commitment emphasis, and once again I am reminded of the debt we each owe to those who have gone before us, whose influence and inspiration helped shape our lives. There are no self-made people. We owe a debt to someone, at least in part, for every blessing we enjoy. Much of the time we cannot repay those to whom we are indebted.
Years ago when I was first coming into ministry, I was assigned an advisor on the Board of Ordained Ministry named Rev. Dr. Ernest Fitzgerald, and I remain in awe of this great man even decades after his death in 2001. He once told me that his parents had so little of this world’s goods, but they did have character and integrity. Years later, he said, he came to recognize how priceless that legacy was. One dark night he was driving home from conducting a revival in the North Carolina mountains. He was going through the town of Fletcher where he had lived as a boy, when he realized he was about out of gas. He finally found a service station open, but the station didn’t accept credit cards, and he wasn’t carrying any cash. He explained his predicament and told the attendant his name, but he said, “No money, no gas.” As he started to leave, the man called to him, “Are you Jim Fitzgerald’s son?” Ernest said that he was. The attendant went to the gas pump and said, “If you’re Jim Fitzgerald’s son, I know you’ll be good for it and send the money.” Ernest told me, “Back in my childhood, I didn’t recognize how important that heritage would be someday.”
Mozart’s operas have often been called the greatest ever composed. Yet Mozart’s funeral, held in Vienna, was attended by only a handful of people and he was buried in a potter’s field where his grave was lost. William Penn, who spent a fortune founding the state that bears his name, also spent his last years in a debtor’s prison. More often than not we cannot repay our debts to the people to whom they are owed. The tide of time often prevents that.
Jesus once said, “Freely you have received, therefore freely give” (Matthew 10:8). We repay our debt to the past by being faithful to the present and the future. Most of us have been helped somewhere along the way. We look back and remember those people and wonder how we can pay our debt to them. However, time and distance have often separated them from us forever.
It’s worth remembering, however, that while we may not be able to return the blessings to those from whom they came, we can still pay our debts. We can pass along to someone else a special act of kindness, a good deed or a good word. The people who do that, I believe, make an amazing discovery. They find a new peace of mind and an inner serenity the world cannot give nor take away. They know their debts are paid.
May we always be found faithful in squaring our accounts,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
