Good morning, My Dear Friends,
I remember years ago reading The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, whom you will recall was deaf, mute, and blind. She apparently had a brilliant mind but had no way to feed it except through touch, taste, and smell. When Ann Sullivan came into her life and managed to establish communication with her, one of the things she told Helen was about God. Helen Keller later declared, “I always knew He was there even in the silence and the darkness, but I didn’t know His name.” That, I believe, may be a parable of contemporary life for many of us. We are looking for something but don’t know what it is.
I’m convinced that this lies behind much of the world’s restlessness. We lack faith in an overriding hand moving in the affairs of humankind. We have depended on the genius of humanity and come up with Hiroshima, Watergate, and 9/11. We have relied on the treasury of possessions and come up with polluted rivers and poisoned air. We have turned to drugs and are living with terrifying flashbacks and shattered minds. But deep inside we know there is someone out there we haven’t touched. We don’t know His name. We need someone to tell us who He is. I submit to you that the church is under mandate to give the world that Name.
How do we do it? The only thing I can come up with is the way this Name came to me. As I think about it, it came to me through the church. I have been helped, and am still being helped, by all kinds of people engaged in all kinds of tasks. I am indebted to brilliant minds who have been able to guide by feeble thought processes into at least some limited understanding of the nature of God. I am also indebted to simple people who could only give a cup of water and a crust of bread. I’ve watched great people with unlimited ability perform simple acts of service in the name of Christ. But all of these, great and small, have been witnesses to the light that has brightened my life. Because of them, my understanding of the nature of God grows more meaningful every day.
Perhaps we talk too much these days about talents. It’s as if a person must produce a string of degrees and be the master of exceptional skills before he or she can render a service. From what I can see and learn in my own experience, there is not even one among us whom God cannot use.
Whenever I find myself debating what we need most in the church, I often recall an old line I heard long ago. “What God needs most is not ability but availability.” That’s a talent all of us possess, and that’s what God needs.
May you have a faith which enables you to meet whatever comes,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
